Very Modern Women

http://docomomo-us.org/news/daring_design_modern_women_architects_northern_california?utm_source=Docomomo+revised+mailing+list&utm_campaign=46d

Kauffman House
Langhorst & Lang
Photograph courtesy of the Langhorst family
docomomo-us.org

Hello Everyone:

We are well on our way to 20,000 page views.  Nice way to start an otherwise hot week here in Los Angeles.  I am thinking we can hit this goal by January 1, 2015.  Who's with me?

Today's subject is Women architects of Northern California.  The article for this post, "Daring to Design Modern: Women Architects of Northern California" by Inge S. Horton, comes to us from Docomomo_US and it looks at the role women architects played in the development of California modern; focusing specifically on women architects in the San Francisco Bay Area.  If you look through any book on Modern architecture, with the exception of one or two names, you would be hard pressed to find anymore than one or two names in connection with Bay Area modernism.  It is a rather strange situation because the lack of mention does not mean there were not any women architects practicing in the region, there were, it is just the majority were as well known. Jus because they were not prominent, it does not mean they were not part of architectural history.

KYA Building
Julia Morgan
Bayview Hill, San Francisco
bayarearadio.org

The modern movement was slow to take hold in the architecturally conservative Bay Area, long held in the grip of the traditional Beaux-Art approach.  Quite different from their neighbors in Southern California who wholeheartedly embraced the work of modern masters such as Irving Gill, Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames.  The breath taking photograph of Julius Schulman contributed to making Los Angeles famous as a center for the modern movement.  However, Ms. Horlon points out there were some precursors to Modernism in the Bay Area.  As a young architect, Bernard Maybeck was taken by the redwood house built by the Reverend Joseph Worcester in the mid-1870s and the Reverend's Swedborgian Church.  Bernard Maybeck then design a simple redwood house for Charles Keeler in 1895.  Dazzled by this house and its natural setting, several non-architect women formed the Hillside Club in 1898 to protect the beauty of North Berkeley from garishly decorated Victorian houses.  The organization's philosophy was promoted by Charles Keeler in book The Simple Home. (http://www.oregoncoast.net/simplehome.htm)  Among the Mr. Keelers followers were Reverend Worcester, Mr. Maybeck, A. Page Brown, Ernest Coxhead, and Julia Morgan.

In the twenties and thirtes, architect William W. Wurster gained a reputation as the creator of the more vernacular Second Bay Tradition.  The landmark 1932 exhibition "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition," at the Museum of Modern Art, co-curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnston (Hitchcock and Johnston, 1932) introduced European Modernism to America which rejected historicism, emphasized volume instead of mass, replaced axiality with regularity, and rejected ornamentation.  The mild California climate and abundance of stunning landscape led to close link between indoor and outdoor spaces.  Further, following World War II, an awareness of changing social conditions became an important factor in housing, in particular mass housing during and after the war.

Golden Gate Bridge detail
en.wikipedia.org

Breaking Loose from Tradition: "Transitional Women Architects

Julia Morgan: Julia Morgan is the best-known and most revered female American architect with an impressive legacy of over 700 buildings.  Ms. Morgan's early work follows the First Bay Tradition, then shifts to a richer historic vocabulary taken from the Beaux-Arts. In the thirties, she designed some lesser known modern broadcasting facilities such as the KYA Broadcasting Building in the remote Bayview Hills.  Compositionally, the building can be categorized as "decorative modernism." (this term was coined by Irving Morrow; "Why Modern Architecture").  Inge Horlon notes, "...she only designed these few modern buildings, it is a little farfetched to label her a 'transitional architect.'"

Gertrude Comfort (Morrow): by comparison, Gertrude Comfort (Morrow) is an excellent example of a "transitional" architect.  Ms. Morrow opened her own office in San Francisco in 1917; initially designing traditional houses, such as the Mason residence in the Dutch Colonial revival manner.  In 1920, she married fellow architect Irving Morrow; in 1925, the Morrows joined their practices.  The painter Maynard Dixon recommended the morrows for a commission to Golden Gate Bridge (1930-37).  This was their breakthrough, the Morrows designed the toll plaza the stunning Art Deco towers and pylons, the lighting standards, and they chose the now famous burnt orange color for the Bridge.

House for Olive Cowell
Morrow and Morrow
Forest Hill, San Francisco
docomomo-us.org

Gertrude Morrow's role in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge has sometimes been questioned because the contract was in her husband's name.  However, in a 1930 letter about their design strategy for the Bridge from the firm to the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Bridge & Highway District, Irving Morrow deliberately uses the pronouns "we, us" and "our" indicating that he and his wife both worked on the project.

In the early thirties, San Francisco State College professor Olive Cowell commissioned the Morrows to design a house for her, on a steeply sloping parcel of land in Forest Hill.  The was designed in the then-fashionable International style and is the first modern house in San Francisco. (see note 5 in the article)  The Golden Gate International Exposition in 1938 featured amazing modern architecture designed by local architects including the Morrows' contribution the Alameda-Contra Costa Counties building which incorporated the modernist idioms.  However, after 1933, most of their houses were designed in a fairly conventional manner, most likely because their clients preferred more traditional designs.

Bird's eye watercolor of Cowell House
Morrow and Morrow
Forest Hill, San Francisco
docomomo-us.org

Creating a New Generation of Modernists" Architects educated at UC Berkley

During the thirties and forties, architecture students at the University of California, Berkeley became enamored with the Modern Movement. (Littman; "The Final Days of the Beaux Arts: Warren Perry and the Student Campaign for Modernism at Berkeley," 2009)  However, under then-Dean Warren Perry, Beaux-Arts was the official design vocabulary for the School of Architecture.  This did not prevent the students from requesting modern architecture and studio projects that dealt with real world issues such as mass housing.  In true Berkeley manner, they challenged the authority of the faculty, sought the help of then-University President Sproul, in the late thirties published an underground design journal The New Design, which outlined their approach to modern architecture.  The long struggle came to the forefront after the War when veterans entered the architecture and were not impressed by the dated architecture and lack of interdisciplinary studies.  In 1948, Dean Perry was forced to resign and replaced by William Wurster who had the experience in leading a school of architecture from his days at the Massachusetts Institute of Architecture.  Together with his wife Catherine Bauer-Wurster, a housing expert, they revised the curriculum, added new faculty, and established the College of Environmental Design which took a more interdisciplinary approach to architecture.

Witkin Family House
Elizabeth Witkin, 1938
docomomo-us.org

Elizabeth Hiller (Witkin Tarris) was among several who graduated from Berkeley in the thirties. Elizabeth Hiller graduated in 1934 with honors and was awarded a travel scholarship; which she used to study Modernism in Europe.  Upon her return, she intern with Angus McSweeney until she received her license in 1939.  Prior to being awarded her license, she designed a house for herself and her husband Bernard Witkin.  The rectangular house #1 step up a steep slope with the each story set back along the incline.  The garage is at street level.  The public areas are on the top level.  The house features white stucco walls, large windows, a flat roof, and no decorative elements, naturally.  Ms. Witkin went on to receive more commissions in Antioch, California, including the Hamm Apartment buildings which combines residences over garages along the street and garden apartments in the rear of the lot.

Esherick House
Rebecca Wood Esherick
Kent Woodlands, California
ced.berkeley.edu

Architects Migrating to the Bay Area

A few women, who graduated during the thirties and forties from schools elsewhere, found their way to the San Francisco Bay Area attracted by the excellent architectural reputation.  Among those architectural migrants was Rebecca Wood (Esherick Watkin), who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, moved west, hoping to work with modern architects.  She eventually found employment with a San Rafael design firm that specialized in colonial style houses, not exactly what she was looking for.  In 1938, she married her husband Joseph Esherick, whom she knew from Penn. Ten years later, they designed their own house in Kent Woodlands.  The style of the house seemed to reference early work of mid-century modernist John Lautner with its huge gabled roof and large glass walls.

Kauffman House, the kitchen island
Langhorst & Lang Burlingame 1949
Photograph courtesy of the Langhorst family
docomomo-us.org

  In 1941 Lois Wilson (Langhorst) arrived in the Bay  Area with goal of working with William Wurster,  whose practice was doing some of the most  fascinating work in the country.  Despite her sterling  qualifications from MIT, the visit turned out to be a  disappointment because Mr. Wurster would not hire  women, not even as a secretary, to work in his office.  However, she did meet her husband, architect Fred Langhorst and together they opened their own successful residential design practice after the war.  Although their work was widely published, Ms. Langhorst was not always acknowledge for her work partly due to her husband not crediting her and partly because journalists were not in the habit of acknowledging women's professional work.

In an article titled "Home-Physical Form or Emotion," Lois Langhorst wrote:

Today, our homes are a variety of forms, of styles, Colonial, Spanish, English, each borrowed from another time and culture.  Each has look for which we have an emotional attachment.  None quite fits the needs of today, the way in which we live.  Each is a picture, a nostalgic effort to capture what was never truly ours...In attempting to retain the appearance of that which we have known, we do not realize the possible beauty that we could achieve in creating a new and fresh approach, the building which is of our day and time and the way we live... (Langhorst, "Home-Physical Form or Emotion;" 1946)

The beginning of the Korean War (1950-53) forced the abandonment of non-war related projects.  The Langhorsts opted to shutter their office and move with their three daughters to Europe.  When they returned to San Francisco in 1955, they were divorced and Ms. Langhorst needed to earn an income after failing to secure sufficient employment during the proceedings.  Ms. Langhorst continued work for several more years before turning to teaching at Berkeley but was refused tenure by William Wurster.  To improve her standing, she studied for and received a Master's degree in architectural history from Harvard; continuing to teach at the Universities of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Louisville.

Women architects have been contributing to oeuvre of modern architecture for over a century.  Yet their work has been frequently overshadowed by their male counterparts.  This does not have to continue this way.  Thanks to Inge S. Horlon and Docomomo for spotlighting the work of the women architects featured today, we now who they were and what they did.  Let's hope that the architecture profession and the history books catch up soon