Secret History X

The architectural history of Los Angeles is a study in contrasts and a lesson in the dynamics of social and nationalistic polarity.  To truly understand and appreciate the scope of the architectural history of Los Angeles it is important to lay a basic foundation or time-line within which the various stylistic interpretations were expressed. And explain some of the social and economic triggers that spurred population growth and construction cycles in the area.

In 1781 Los Angeles started out as a small Spanish Colonial settlement on the banks of the El Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (Los Angeles River). At that time the emphasis was on swift and functional construction rather than on architecture designed to express the glory of God or the grandeur of the Empire. The pueblo erected by Conquistador Felipe de Neve was simple adobe without ostentatious ornamental display. Faced with the vagaries of colonial living and rebuilding as a consequence of the constant battle with the local river (which flooded annually). The architecture remained utilitarian in design and simple in expression through the first two decades of the 1800′s.

Within the first two decades of the 1800′s, three architecturally significant cathedrals (La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles, Mission San Fernando Rey de España, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel) were erected in the Spanish Neoclassical Minimalist style.

By 1850 the Spanish influence on architecture of the Los Angeles area was on the wane due to the successive waves of migrating Yankees and Jews eager to find work in the area’s emerging oil and mining industries began to flood the Los Angeles River basin. This migration was  fueled by extended labor disputes in the union labor towns of Northern California (San Francisco, Oakland etc.) in the latter decades of the 1800′s. When these displaced and dissatisfied workers fled these towns, they brought with them their open labor shops and set up an industrial base in the L.A. area.

As these immigrants set up homes in the area the architecture of Main Street Los Angeles became nearly indistinguishable from the Main Street of  any similar sized city in the Midwest. Adobe was replaced by fired brick and woodframe construction as the preferred medium of construction. Eastern styles such as Mansard, Victorian, Queen Anne, Eastlake, Anglo-Colonial Revival, and Beau-arts predominated.  Henry Hobson Richardson introduced the concept of the classical column in urban architecture, where the first two floors of city high rise buildings provided a strong formed base for the uniformly modeled floors above topped with a capital comprised of an lavishly decorated top floor that gave architectural definition to the entire building.

Despite the flood of immigrants and construction boom, and because of the availability of arable land surrounding the city, Los Angeles itself remained small until 1900. It was not until after 1900, that Los Angeles experienced its fastest period of growth when the advent of the automobile age enabled Americans from all over, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and a wide variety of geography, to migrated over what was now a relatively short drive by truck. Old buildings were razed to make way for newer bigger buildings to accommodate the burgeoning population, and need for public space.

The turn of the century saw the establishment of several organizations founded by persons who were alarmed by the rate of destruction of historical Spanish Mission style buildings. in 1894 the California Landmarks Club was founded to preserve and restore California’s Mission churches. This organization did much to influence the incorporation of Mission Style elements into buildings other than the religious edifice. Tile roofs, gables, arches, dome, quatrefoil windows and other restoration elements soon found their way into commercial and public buildings and private residences. Contemporary to and often hand in had with this move to incorporate Mission Style elements was the spread of the Contemporaneous with the spread of Mission Revival and its return to a simpler past was the development of the Arts and Crafts movement (among the middle to upper income homeowners) and its less affluent sister the California Bungalow.

Following WWI, impetus was given to revivalist efforts as a new conservatism manifested among the citizenry. Revivalist styles took on a new flamboyant extravagance. In 1915 Bertram Goodhue and his group of fellow architects introduced the Spanish Plateresque and Churrigueresque forms of Mission architecture for use in public and religious buildings that had to this point not been seen outside of Mexico. While the International style, so popular in Europe following WWI, was rejected in favor of Stylized Modernism as inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright (who despised the European International Style).

American architects, true to the American ethos of adopting anything and everything foreign, translating it and remaking it into its own cosmopolitan image, began a movement which incorporated into its ethic, a reductionist approach to then current design trends. The European Art Nouveau was toned down to a more popular Art Deco which in turn gave way gradually during the latter half of the 20′a to the Streamline Moderne in the 1930s, and a quieter more subdued “Mediterranean” form was adopted in domestic architecture.

Entire neighborhoods took on an exotic flavor and utilized by the area’s film industry as  backdrops and models for locally produced “foreign films.” In fact, the movie industry would have a large impact on the Architecture of Los Angeles, eventually converting the entire city to a virtual film studio. Hollywoodland began in 1888 as a small residential development spearheaded by resident Harvey Henderson Wilcox and his wife, Daeida. It was incorporated as an independent city in 1903 but then annexed to the larger city of Los Angeles in 1910. By 1923 developers Woodruff and Shoults conceive of “Hollywoodland” as a neighborhood of “superb environment without excessive cost on the Hollywood side of the hills,” and construction of Lake Hollywood Reservoir commences to provide the neighborhood with water.

In 1923 land in the Hollywood area was purchased by Hirsz, Aaron, Szmul, and Itzhak Wonskolaser (aka. Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner) for the purpose of setting up a motion picture studio, not far from the studio offices of Louis Burt Mayer then owner of Louis B. Mayer Pictures and Hollywood resident. Mayer’s business would later merge with Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in 1924 under the leadership of Marcus Loew to become MGM Studios.  The name Hollywood would become synonymous with the film industry itself during the Studio Era as westerns were shot in Owens Valley, desert films were shot in Death Valley, Pirate movies were shot in Carmel, winter movies were shot in San Bernardino and movies set in the Mediterranean or the eastern U.S. were shot on location in and around the city of Los Angeles.

During the years from 1922 – 1959, R.M. Schindler and his Wright inspired group of associates who nearly single-handedly transformed Los Angeles into the center of the American Modernist Movement. The more innovative among them spearheading the unfortunately named Postmodern movement. (Rather than being a forward leaning movement, as its name would suggest, Postmodernism actually strives to create a synthesis of past and future by combining the clean modernist lines with features and details from past styles.)

Following WWII this Postmodernism, inspired by the tools and technologies of the Atomic Age, took on an increasingly fantastic expression by incorporating elements of industrial pop culture and iconic mechanical designs.  Los Angeles became the birthplace of the postmodern sub-style known as “Googie” or, alternately, “Populuxe.” The first known instance of Populuxe architecture was the Googie Coffee Shop on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights which while giving a nod to Streamlined Moderne, wen above and beyond in incorporating interpretive elements of the atomic age. This landmark building was later demolished in 1980′s.

Characteristics of Googie or Populuxe style are  upswept cantilevered roofs, curvaceous, acute angles and geometric  shapes, and bold use of glass, steel, neon illumination, plastic paneling and lines evocative of flight and motion, such as free-form boomerangs, flying saucers, atoms, cutouts, parabolas, and tail fins. Like most of the trendy pop culture based styles (such as Art Deco), most of the buildings of this era have not survived  urbanization pressures and have been demolished to make way for more modernist style buildings.

The latter half of the century (from 1980′s on) saw a return to the core ethics of the Internationalist style. While the Postmodern Style  still dominated the more novel or expressionist elements were toned down or eliminated in favor of a more subtle expression of the stylistic fusionism so characteristic of American Architecture. Key examples of this new direction would be St Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Pacific Palisades, the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Glendale, Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Rafael Moneo’s Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in the Spanish International revival style. The latter structure is unique in its external austerity while its interior maximizes space and the play of light in the earlier Gothic style.

The new millennium has been ushered in with a return to introspection on the part of the American people as a whole. We are asking ourselves questions about sustainability for the future.  While it appears that most of the more imaginative architecture is still being created on L.A.’s west side, (Culver City, Santa Monica, Venice and West Hollywood). Most of the work for new architects is in the fields of interior design. While some factors such as the current poor economy, cultural consumerism, and a highly transitional population have conspired to waste precious architectural talent on empty and short-lived remodeling gigs, other factors such as population pressures and the need for historical preservation work together to move architectural consideration toward the new and relatively unexplored study of Urban Sustainability.

With the average Californian’s new introspection on the need for renewable resources, and sustainable living the architectural style in Los Angeles promises to change again in a major direction that will blends eco-sustainable urban living with more organic contemporary designs (for new buildings) and wholesale Green Conversion of the more historical buildings.  We may in the future end up with a city that resembles more closely the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon than Main Street USA.

Additional References:

Archiplanet: Los Angeles

Chronology of Architecture in Los Angeles

Document LA

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