by Paul R. Spitzzeri
La Casa Nueva’s centennial, spanning five years embracing its planning, design and construction until completion late in 1927, gives us plenty of opportunity to share more of the history of this remarkably customized Spanish Colonial Revival gem, which is not just interesting architecturally but intriguing as a sort of laboratory for how the Temple family and, by extension, people in greater Los Angeles thought, however romantically, of California’s and the region’s past.
The rapid development of our area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought more awareness and attention to other parts of the country, including the East Coast, and a good example of this from the standpoint of buildings is an article in The American Architect, a weekly publication from New York issued from 1876 to 1938 when it was absorbed by the still-existing Architectural Record.
The piece was penned by Dwight James Baum (1886-1939), an architect from central New York who was best known in New York City as well as Sarasota, Florida. His Riverdale Monument in the Bronx borough of the former is one extant example of his work, but he is best known for the 56-room Cá de Zan winter residence of circus owner John Ringling and which became part of a state-owned complex with an art museum and a circus museum, now administered by Florida State University.
Baum began by observing that “several years ago, I made my first trip to California and was very favorably impressed with the excellent work being done by several architects in San Francisco and Los Angeles,” though he added that there were only a half-dozen or so that he were admired by him. Still, he noted that the quality of their work “was equal to that of the eastern states for excellence of design and sincerity of feeling.”
A recent return trip, however, led Baum to state that he “was pleased to observe the excellent buildings” built in the intervening period “indicating that the standard of design and workmanship and the handling of materials had been steadily improving.” All of 41 years of age, the architect added that “impetus to this movement had been given by many young architects who have recently come to the fore” and he praised San Diego and Santa Barbara for having “achieved recognition by the excellence of their buildings.” Locally, he specified the architects of Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Pasadena for their quality and commented,
As a result of this keen race for honors and the wholesome competition that has thus developed, an added stimulus has been given to architecture which is resulting in much fine work, and California can look with pride upon these accomplishments.
Baum expressed disdain for those in the profession who “practiced weird and bizarre effects under the impression that that was modern architecture and that they were creating a new style.” Continuing that “few have succeeded in radically changing the dignified course which architecture has always followed,” he felt that “California seems to have evolved a new style which has been developed by using the old missions as examples.”
This was the Spanish Colonial Revival and Baum averred that “everyone is familiar with the history of the early days of the state of California and also of the padres who brought with them the education and arts of old Spain to a new and strange country.” The result, he asserted, was that “the lack of skilled labor,” the sole mention of the indigenous people yoked to the system, “combined with the sometimes vague and sometimes brilliant conceptions of the padres, gave to the West Coast the charming missions which still delight all who see their ruins.” To the architect, it was clear that “California . . . has not been blind to the examples of the past,” though one naturally could ask to what degree that history was romanticized.
After an aside about “glaring examples of mediocre buildings,” presumably those modern monstrosities mentioned above, “that are not even good for the present generation,” Baum expressed admiration for California architecture which drew from the past while also being “modern in its adaptation to present-day uses, and yet basically sound.” Beauty and utility in balance, not slavish imitations were such that, when it came to Spanish Colonial Revival,
It is Spanish and yet there is nothing like it in Spain. It is Mexican Colonial and yet again it is American, true to its local surroundings, fitting it climatically and serving the need of its people both as to art and to use.
Allowing that he could not include many fine examples by excellent practitioners of the architectural art, Baum singled out a pair of Angel City structures in the Renaissance Revival style, including the Standard Oil Building, completed in November 1924 and designed by George W. Kelham, whose work was mainly in San Francisco but who was the supervising architect for the early structures at UCLA. It was noted that the structure, still with us at the northwest corner of Tenth (now Olympic Boulevard) and Hope streets, “shows a fine sense of materials and study of detail.”
The Pacific National Bank Building, finished in May 1926 at the northwest corner of Hill and 9th streets and the work of the well-known Los Angeles firm of Morgan, Walls and Clements, which traced its ancestry back to the Angel City’s first professional architect, Ezra F. Kysor (said to be responsible for the circa 1870 major renovation of the Workman House at the Homestead), was deemed to be “of the same type, but not as carefully detailed as the other example.” Baum appreciated the upper level ornamentation of the still-standing edifice, but then commented, “one wonders if the elevation is an honest expression of the plan.”
As to the Los Angeles Central Public Library, which was opened in early July 1926, the design by Carleton Winslow and Bertram Goodhue (who died two years prior before construction commenced), Baum observed that it was “surely modernistic in feeling” and, given that the word seemed to be anathema to his aesthetics, it is not surprising that he had a problem with “Goodhue’s great genius mixed with heavy German feeling which is not so pleasing.”
Also mentioned was the Elks Lodge #99 Building, now the Park Plaza Hotel, across from Westlake (now MacArthur) Park and the work of the firm of Aleck Curlett and Claude Beelman, which was felt to be “most expressive of its use” compared to the library building as well as “most imposing with its great doorway illuminated” in the evening. Baum’s concern was his sense of the harmonizing of design and function for structures like these.
The writer cited California’s leading role with school buildings, which “show good planning, charm in design and pleasing use of materials,” while he also admired church edifices which “shows versatility and great merit” that he wished to highlight in a future article. As to other buildings, Baum wrote that “theatres, warehouses, store buildings and apartment houses in many cases show originality in the method of handling their problem in mass and detail and yet these designs are sane” with Morgan, Walls and Clements cited for their effectiveness.
Pasadena was praised for its opulent new city hall and library, the former by Bakewell and Brown of San Francisco and the latter by local architect Myron Hunt, and the author offered that the pair were such “that any city of any size would be proud to possess.” He felt the civic structure was “incomplete” but called it “stately” and “most impressive,” while the library “is charming in its simplicity.”
Baum, though, considered that “the domestic [residential] work of any community is, in the final analysis, the work that shows the real progress of the section as to good taste and artistic development. Among those who specialized in this area who were feted by the architect were Goodhue, Hunt, George Washington Smith, Reginald Johnson, Elmer Grey, Wallace Neff and Gordon B. Kauffman, among others.
Baum highlighted the Isidor Eisner (owner of many downtown Los Angeles commercial structures) mansion, designed by Kauffman, in the tony Hancock Park section of Los Angeles as “an important, dignified Italian villa, reminding one of the fine villas near Frascati [southeast of Rome], unusual in plan, fine use of materials, and good detail and landscape setting.” The house, recently owned by now-divorced film stars Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas is in the possession of the chief operating officer of Netflix.
Another featured residence was the Pasadena (actually, San Marino) mansion of Arthur Bourne, treasurer and director of Singer Sewing Machine Company, with the architect being Neff. Baum wrote that the structure “shows great love for the Mexican Colonial and this house was a great delight to me when I came upon it unexpectedly one day just before sunset.”
Other local examples included homes in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles by David Malcolm Mason, not as well known as those mentioned above and the Santa Monica work of John Byers, a Spanish Colonial Revival specialist there and in adjacent Brentwood and Pacific Palisades and whose work with adobe (used in the building of La Casa Nueva, the Temple family residence at the Homestead) was notable.
Baum concluded his article by describing it as “a short appreciation of the able men and their work on our west coast state of California,” while adding that his visit was too short to find out the names of architects who designed buildings that were featured in accompanying photographs. He commented,
However, if this article graphically shows the excellent work being done in that state, it has justified its raison d’ etre, for it was primarily written to bring home the fact that the architectural work of Southern California should receive the recognition it so justly deserves.
Had the architect known about La Casa Nueva and the architect, Roy Selden Price of Beverly Hills, who completed it, one wonders what his judgment would have been. Would Baum have been impressed by its design and its relation to function? Would it have possessed the requisite amount of “sincerity of feeling” and “honest expression of the plan”? Could the Spanish Colonial Revival house have exemplified his praise of “a fine sense of materials and study of detail”?
As we continue our centennial commemoration of the Temple family’s house, including special tours this year that will explore it in depth, we’ll be mindful of both the design, style and decoration, but also of its romantic representations of history, though in a different manner of balance of design and function than what Baum considered vital in his article.