Of the Land and On the Land

“Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes….  It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may prove dangerous; but in the end it produces more than any absolute government, and if it does fewer things well, it does a greater number of things.  Under its sway the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so important as what is done by private exertion.  Democracy does not confer the most skillful kind of government upon the people, but it produces what the most skillful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits.  These are the true advantages of democracy.”  Alexis de Tocqueville

Charles Collins Teague Residence (1922), Roy C. Wilson, Architect

Santa Paula in California is a revelation at risk.

In 1888, Santa Paula was a town built in fact, from the land, by free people who endowed it with means to prosper, adapt, and endure.  Evangelization, exploration, and cultivation had coalesced in the form of globally-scaled citriculture long before terms like globally-scaled were ever imagined.  The fruit of this evolution included a small city at the foot of a mountain called Santa Paula peak, in a land with mountains to spare, in a place where two waters converge, in a county that still carries the name of its mission.

While Santa Paula grew out of the valley, it incorporated revolutionary developments.  Continental rail, petroleum, aviation, film, flood control, electricity, refrigeration, and the automobile were all embraced without diminishment of its urban identity or integrity.  The city evolved very well.

And the city has endured.  The flush of prosperity that vanished with Union Oil and the Santa Barbara spill, and which remains in abeyance while California oil waits upon reserve depletion abroad, has not impaired Santa Paula’s greeting of interstate travel, immigration, or regionalized industry.

International Order of Oddfellows Building (1905)

The town endures for better days, and the architecture has helped.  The as-yet undefined alchemy of early twentieth century California Victorian building endowed Santa Paula with its current form, which has thus far enabled Santa Paula to constructively incorporate land and industry with dwelling and polity.

There is a kind of Democracy built in to Santa Paula that is worth regarding.  It can creep into the subconscious walking the neighborhoods within the gridiron of the historic center, where the architectural variety that is common to pre-war mixed-use American towns still remains, and takes a variety of forms and styles that have been carefully calibrated to compliment their neighbors.

It becomes evident where the homes of the families responsible for creating Santa Paula’s industry and commerce share streets with the homes of the people responsible for providing its labor and administration.  Its profoundness is revealed by the city’s layout, which compliments the dominant landforms and water bodies, and its gridiron plan, which firmly and clearly orients the city to the land and connects its buildings, and their occupants, to one another.  That connection is reinforced by an architecture of the city that is consistent with and compliments the architecture of the surrounding agricultural valley.

Perhaps most admirably, Santa Paula remains a city built from the prosperity of the land that has maintained respect for that resource through a persistently compact and economical border.  An early emphasis on landscaping throughout the city that was followed with diligent care for trees and gardens weaves the city into the surrounding valley and celebrates its unique cultivation-based prosperity.

Pleasant Street, 600-900 Block (1887-1930's), Roy Wilson et al., Architects

The design of Santa Paula, and its successes, reveal something concrete and specific about the way we choose to live together on the land, about the kinds of relationships that we prefer to build between ourselves and the land and amongst one another.  Santa Paula is a place where my five-year-old son can literally walk out his front door and port himself to his neighbor, school, church, park, dentist, city hall, restaurant, doctor, library, bakery, train station.  He already possesses a concrete political realm that cannot be taken from him, and which will help form his idea of what it means to inhabit the world around him.

The goods and benefits that follow from successful urban design are literally free for anyone to enjoy.  Temperate resource consumption, beautiful streets and public spaces, neighbors and neighborhood, are not accidents.  These things result from the choices that the people of Santa Paula have made over time in choosing how to live with one another in this particular place. 

Santa Paula is a city built by free people, cognizant and able, not by machines, policies, or interests.  When the quality of a thing is sufficiently understood and its value apprehended, some of the important questions that follow become: How can we make more of it?, and How can we continue to make it better?

What we have helps reveal what is possible.

South Mountain, Santa Paula

an uncommonly common realm

Tranquility can persist in the midst of apparent chaos.  Tucked away in Beverly Hills there is a pocket of surprisingly familiar urban design.

The concern for most people at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards is moving on.  Few think of it as a place to remain.  The odd convergence of these two east-west thoroughfares is reflected in the layout of the neighborhood to the south.  On one side a regular grid of north-south blocks echoes the regular cadence of Los Angeles' westward expansion.  On the other side the streets are dramatically rotated to the south, reoriented towards the city's ultimate coastal destination.

There are serval neighborhoods in Los Angeles like the one around Lasky Drive in Beverly Hills, where the convergence of different grids generates an array of unique situations.  What is remarkable about this neighborhood is the calmness and consistency of its pedestrian environment in the midst of the formal challenges presented by the layout of its streets.

The neighborhood is held together by consistent street sections and sidewalks, leafy trees, and a relative abundance of simple, hardworking architecture.  The image above is of the triangular block defined by Durant Dr., Lasky Dr., and Charleville Blvd.  The entire block is one building, which presumably allowed the developer and designer a certain amount of control in managing the block's odd triangular shape.  Rather than dominating the block and the middle of the neighborhood, the building is carefully broken down into what seems like a collection of various structures gathered around a shaded courtyard.   

The building's relative diminutiveness creates an attractive place in the center of the neighborhood that can be shared by the surrounding residents.  Its internalized courtyards and facades help temper the commercial traffic that it generates during the day, and its massing and architectural details connect it with the variegated residential buildings that surround it.

The neighborhood spreads out in a variety of apartment buildings.  They incorporate different styles, heights, and urban features, but do so in a consistent manner that conveys a discernible visual identity to the pedestrian.

Street trees and sidewalks help make the neighborhood's common spaces desirable places to be.

Front doors that are close to the public realm are enhanced with porch covers, landscaping, and steps.

An apartment building that creates a garden courtyard at the corner provides a sense of expansion for the whole neighborhood.

This apartment's forecourt has been converted into a parking ramp.  Though somewhat less habitable than originally intended, the space still offers a shady green reservoir to the street and a charming transition between public and private realms.

"Dressing up" a side door, so to speak, can help resolve the tensions that arise between public and private spaces.  This is a side door to a larger apartment building, but it is still someone's front door, and it opens right upon the public sidewalk.  Steps, landscaping, a covered porch, and architectural details help prevent the door from being overwhelmed or overlooked by the neighborhood. 

To see more, here is a full gallery of the neighborhood.

hopping madness

Clark Library, Main Entry, R.D. Farquhar

Few people realize that the Beaux Arts landed in the Southern California desert a long time ago.  Fewer have seen how it has endured since then.  The Clark Library is a kind of revelation.

R.D. Farquhar's diminutive masterpiece pushes every boundary that could possibly be applied.  Here is the baroque from Germany, France, Italy, and England, with a surfeit of British classicism and American picturesque.

While San Francisco was hedonistically monumental, LA was seriously domestic.  Who knew?

There is a great deal more in Los Angeles than you might imagine.

gaz

not to yield

Biltmore Hotel, Montecito

Reginald Johnson practiced architecture in Southern California and beyond for roughly forty years.  His career spanned the most transformative era yet in American history, beginning before the First World War and winding down just before the boom time expansion of the 1950’s.  His collaborators included Gordon Kaufmann, A. E. Hanson, Clarence Stein, and the Olmsted brothers.  His work influenced architects of all imaginable stripes and trajectories, from Myron Hunt to Richard Neutra.

Johnson thrived as an architect in every available scale, market, and context.  His greatest contributions were, however, more to the places that he helped make, architectural and urban, than to his own aggrandizement.  His work is exemplary for professionals and patrons alike.  His achievements tell more of his time and place, and the people who made them possible, than of himself.

In transformative and turbulent times, Reginald Johnson offered a wealth of work that quietly stands ready for the critic’s laurel while offering daily inspiration to what is arguably the broadest office in Southern California.  This is democratic architecture.

Here is a celebration of some of Reginald Johnson’s most important California projects:

United States Post Office, Santa Barbara

The following are some of Reginald Johnson's most significant works and collaborations, with attribution where available:

Reginald Davis Johnson, Architect: Projects and Collaborations

• H. Page Warden House, Pasadena, CA, 1910
• Walter M. Rose House, Pasadena, CA, 1911
• Reginald D. Johnson House, Pasadena, CA, 1911
• John McWilliams Jr. House, Pasadena, CA, 1912
• Ramsey House, Pasadena, CA, 1913
• W.F. West House, South Pasadena, CA, 1913
• Pierre E. Letchworth House, Covina, CA, 1913
• Mrs. Henry H. Lissner House, Los Angeles, CA, 1913
• James Slauson House, Azusa, CA, 1913
• East Colorado Street Theater, Pasadena, CA, 1914
• St. Saviour's Chapel, Harvard Westlake, Los Angeles, CA, 1914
• T.L. Duque House, Los Angeles, CA, 1914
• Frederick Sherman House, Coronado, CA, 1915
• Reginald D. Johnson House #2, Pasadena, CA, 1915
• R.W. Rives House (Casa del Sueno), Montecito, CA, 1916
• Annandale Golf Club, Pasadena, CA, 1917
• Tod Ford House, Pasadena, CA, 1917
• E.C. Thiers House, Pasadena, CA, 1918
• Edwin Gould Hacienda, Montecito, CA, 1918
• John Percival Jefferson Estate (Miraflores), Montecito, CA, 1918, AIA Gold Medal - First Awarded in Southern CA
• Landreth House (Oak Knoll), Pasadena, CA, c. 1918
• D.F. Paxton House, Pasadena, CA, 1919, AIA Southern CA Honor Award
• Gavit House (Lotusland), Montecito, CA, 1919
• Max Fleischmann House, Summerland, CA, 1920
• Wigmore House, Pasadena, CA, 1920
• St. Paul's Pro-Cathedral Pershing Square Project, Los Angeles, CA, 1920
• St. John's Church Competition Project, Los Angeles, CA, 1921
• Harvard School Dining Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 1921
• Edward Lowe House (El Eliseo), Montecito, CA, 1923
• All Saint's Episcopal Church, Pasadena, CA, 1923
• Santa Barbara City Hall Project, Santa Barbara, CA, 1923
• Hale Solar Laboratory, San Marino, CA, 1924
• Griffith House (Oak Knoll), Pasadena, CA, 1924
• St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Los Angeles, CA, 1924, Demolished 1979
• San Marcos in the Desert Housing Project, Miami, AZ, 1924
• Pasadena Civic Center Competition Project, Pasadena, CA, 1924
• Curtis Cate House, Carpinteria, CA, 1925
• Woodward House, Birmingham, AL, 1925
• La Valencia Hotel, La Jolla, CA, 1925
• Flitridge Riding Club, La Canada Flintridge, CA, 1925
• Palos Verdes Ranch House, Palos Verdes, CA, c. 1925    
• Chapel of St. Simon & St. Jude, Alhambra, CA, 1926
• Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, CA, 1926
• Harold S. Chase House (Las Terrasas), Hope Ranch, CA, 1927, AIA Southern CA Honor Award
• Biltmore Hotel    Montecito, CA, 1927, Silver Medal Architectural League of NY
• Wyant D. Vanderpool House, Fishers Island, NY, 1928
• Frederick P. Warren House, Evanston, IL, 1928
• Harry J. Bauer House, Pasadena, CA, 1928
• Santa Barbara (Cate) School for Boys, Carpinteria, CA, 1929
• Robert J. Baldwin House, Montecito, CA, 1929, Westmont College Admin Building
• William R. Dickinson House, Hope Ranch, CA, 1929
• Sydney R. Francis House, Pasadena, CA, 1929
• La Pumada, House, Montecito, CA, c. 1929
• Santa Barbara Riding & Hunt Club, Hope Ranch, CA, 1930
• Dickinson House Gardener's Cottage, Hope Ranch, CA, 1930, Presidential Medal - Best Small U.S. House
• UCLA Chancellor's Residence, Westwood, CA, 1931
• Lester Baldwin House, Pasadena, CA, 1931
• Clayton Demotte House, Santa Barbara, CA, 1931
• C.H. Jackson House, Montecito, CA, 1931
• St. Alban's Chapel, Westwood, CA, 1931, Memorial to his Father
• Kimbell/Magnus House, Montecito, CA, 1933
• Seely W. Mudd House, San Marino, CA, 1934
• Mrs. William Andrews Clark Estate, Santa Barbara, CA, 1936
• United States Post Office, Santa Barbara, CA, 1937
• Rancho San Pedro Public Housing, San Pedro, CA, 1939
• Harbor Hills Housing Project    Lomita/San Pedro, CA, 1941
• Baldwin Hills Village Housing Project    Los Angeles, CA, 1942, AIA 25 Year Award
• Reginald Johnson House #3    Pasadena, CA, 1947
• Los Angeles Opera House Project, Los Angeles, CA, 1948
• Malcolm McNaughton House, La Canada Flintridge, CA, Undated
• J. L. Severance Estate, Pasadena, CA, Undated
• Ben R. Meyer House, Beverly Hills, CA, Undated

Selected Available Attributions

1.  “The Better Homes Manual by Blanche Halbert.”  Better Homes in America, Inc.  1931.  The University of Chicago Home Economics Series.  Lydia J Roberts, Ed.  chestofbooks.com.    StasoSphere, 2007-2009.  (06 May 2012, http://chestofbooks.com/architecture/Better-Homes/index.html)

2.  Clark, Alson.  “Reginald D. Johnson: Regionalism and Recognition”.  Johnson Kaufmann Coate, Partners in the California Style.  Belloli, Jay, Alson Clark, Jan Furey Muntz, Stefanos Polyzoides.  Scripps College. Capra Press, 1992.

3.  Blessed Buildings, “The Little Church at the Base of Pound Hill.”  Paradise Leased.  Steve Vaught, 2010-12.  (06 May 2012, http://paradiseleased.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/blessed-buildings-the-little-church-at-the-base-of-pound-cake-hill/)

4.  Gates, Thomas P.   “THE PALOS VERDES RANCH PROJECT: Olmsted Brothers' Design Development For A Picturesque Los Angeles Suburban Community Of The 1920s.”  Architronic,    Kent State University Libraries and Media Services. Thomas P. Gates. 1997.  (06 May 2012, http://corbu2.caed.kent.edu/architronic/v6n1/v6n1.03a.html)

5.  Newcomb, Rexford. “Mediterranean Domestic Architecture in the United States.”  Acanthus Press.  New York, 1999.

gaz

classical southern california

United States Post Office, Pasadena

Simple, inspirational place making is alive and well in Southern California, and has been for a considerable time.

These buildings and urban places are preferable just because they are here, and preferable.

Welcome.

gaz

do buildings have meanings?

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McKevett School, Main Entry

Our buildings convey more meanings than we admit, or maybe realize.  We probably can’t know for sure whether buildings possess their meanings or simply bear them, but that point is academic.  What's important to recognize is that buildings constantly, constantly, constantly influence our appreciation of meaning itself.

The McKevett elementary school in Santa Paula conveys many meanings, some complimentary, others contradictory.  And yet somehow the building manages to unite them all.

McKevett School, Aerial Map

First there is the building’s situation, in the middle of Santa Paula’s gridiron, rotated 45 degrees away from the grid.  Why is this meaningful?

When you walk through Santa Paula, McKevett turns your head.  It’s embedded in the heart of town, but it takes a different position.  The building insists on being recognized.

This kind of gesture would be passive-aggression in a person, but buildings don't act, they just are.  McKevett reminds us that recognition is special.  And cognizance is a wonderful message for an education building to convey.

Faulkner Barn, Santa Paula

McKevett's most recognizable inspirations are the barns and the missions of Southern California, which have established and cultivated a young, enduring, and globally resonant local civilization.

The structure's economical planarity, its unifying ridge line, and the repeating pattern of its openings evoke native strains of thrift, integrity, and orderliness that transcend formality and reflect the incomparably generous dignity of shelter.

Presidio, Santa Barbara

From the street, McKevett School resembles a pair of small archetypal Greek stoae.  The building's design places its institution within a larger argument about the democracy of education and the elevation that both transmit.  The debate is enduring:  while prejudice and argument can be tolerated in small doses, we don’t necessarily feel the same about democracy and education.

Stoa of Attalus, Athens

East Stoa, Morgantina

Finally, there is a moment of discovery that the McKevett Elementary School frames Santa Paula peak right in the middle of the town.  There are flitched gables, modulated openings, and a diminutive threshold.  But there, off to the East, is the mountain.  In the center, there is a portal behind a portal.

McKevett School with Santa Paula Peak

Here, as the saying goes, even the eyes have corners.

When we neglect the meanings of buildings we allow our surroundings to separate us from the world we live in.  This is a shame and a kind of elective poverty, because our built environment is made more for the celebration of the dwellers than for the satisfaction of the builders.

Realize here that in building, the builder’s sacrifice is paramount.  It can only be redeemed by a commonweal that recognizes his or her forbearance.  When we neglect the meanings of buildings we scorn the dreams of our builders, which are treasures even greater than the labor that remains.

gaz

santa paula, american city

More than half of Americans in 2000 inhabited cities and rural areas with less than 25,000 people.  Santa Paula, in the Santa Clara River Valley, cradles about 30,000 people on approximately four square miles of ground.  Santa Paula is a small but surprisingly typical American city.

In 1780 Santa Paula was a small Spanish Asistencia (or Estancia, a kind of outpost) to the Franciscan Mission St. Bonaventure.  Records connect it to the Portola expedition of 1769, which introduced the coastal interior of Southern California to Spanish exploration.

Nearly 100 years after the Asistencia was established, N. W. Blanchard came to California via Panama, purchased land, laid out a town plan, and began to plant citrus.

In 1902, thirty years after the beginning of industrial citrus, the city of Santa Paula was formally incorporated. The Union Oil Company of California was founded within its boundary twelve years prior.

Santa Paula presides northerly over the middle of the Santa Clara River Valley.  It sits between the foot of the Topatopa Mountains to the north and the Santa Paula Creek/Santa Clara River confluence to the south.

Santa Paula’s orientation, about seventeen degrees west of north, derives from the local geology of the Transverse Mountain Range, along with Santa Paula Creek and the Santa Clara River in close proximity.  It is also an echo of Spanish colonial planning.  Cities in New Spain were laid out diagonal to the cardinal axes to modulate wind, light, and temperature in ways that were not otherwise attainable.

So, how to compose an American City?

Santa Paula is organized around three streets.  Main and Santa Paula Streets, running east-west, are crossed by Tenth Street., which merges with Ojai Road (SR 150), running north-south.

Main Street looking east, parallel to the Santa Clara River.

Tenth Street looking north, at Main.  Santa Paula Creek runs parallel to the east.  In the distance, Topatopa Mountain turns Santa Paula Creek toward the camera.

Santa Paula Street parallels Main Street, runs about a quarter mile to the north, also following the Santa Clara River.  It is residential by contrast to Main and Tenth, but of a complimentary scale.

Together Main, Santa Paula and Tenth generate the pattern for Santa Paula's most original, most interior neighborhood, which hides in plain sight and is locally unnamed.  It has a gridiron layout and is the most dynamic and most diverse neighborhood in the city.

The Pavilion at the Mill/Santa Barbara Street crossing makes a commemorative center in the middle of the city.  It captures the intersection that generates Santa Paula's layout and the unity engendered by that layout.

Three things bridge local extremes of topography and architecture, and enhance the sense of unity in the gridiron:  First, the streets are wide, overly at times, but enough to provide room to linger and to appreciate the prospect, which is variable.  Second, the consistent orientation means that all of the views are cast in a similar light.  This may sound mysterious, but it's important.  But perhaps most important is the fact that every thing in the gridiron, by virtue of its organization, is no more than two turns away from every other thing on the gridiron.

Except for the things behind the things that interrupt the gridiron, which are also important. 

But the most important thing to remember in Santa Paula, the lynchpin behind the city and its neighborhoods, is Santa Paula Street.  Here's why.

This view of Santa Paula Street looking north, between 7th and Walnut Streets, is a masterclass in simple street design.

The first thing in view is the shade in the foreground, which obscures the street and the garden beyond it.  The shade, cool, is provided by unseen trees behind that mirror the trees in view.  The trees have a pattern.

One layer, more decorative, right upon the street,  ornaments the public thoroughfare.  A second layer, more mature, in closer proximity to the homes beyond, guarantees the shade of the closer trees and modulates their cadence for the viewer.

On one side of the trees there is a street lamp, on the other is a somewhat monumental, possibly manufactured, home.  The texture of the latter blends it with the former.  Not to mention the light.

The house in view is exquisitely Victorian.  With three plus steps off the ground, a tower, and two attics above the second floor, it more than compliments the Union Oil Building at Tenth and Main while proffering facets that lie beyond the immediacy of more highly trafficked streets .

While the architecture on Santa Paula Street recalls the size and scale of Main and Tenth, the landscaping, commemoratively American, echoes the surrounding mountain habitat.  The houses offer many of the details and compositions that can be found in the more elaborate neighborhoods beyond.  Meanwhile their dimensions surpass, that is to say embrace, all of the public and civic construction to be found in town.

Like it or not, in Paris, Rome, London, Beijing, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, and other towns, height is the oft neglected, at times subverted, key to preservation and continuity.  In Santa Paula, height is also regarded.

In the city of Santa Paula, an eponymous street is a window to the rest of the city.

Here's what lies about the center.

gaz