District II: Mesas Crowning Hills:

Figure 73: "Specimens of TYPE II Architecture"

According to the Palos Verdes Estates deed restrictions, greater variation in materials and styles was allowed in District II as exemplified in photographs of Specimens of Type II. (Fig.73) The page includes a Californian house by Marshall R. Lawson, as well as three others which allude more to European historical precedents. For example, the house by Robert D. Farquhar has French windows and a high pitched roof with extended dormers, while the one by Reginald Johnson alludes to an English cottage type. The Arthur R. Kelly design is Antebellum with a two story porch covering the entire front, and a main entrance with a Palladian fan window above. District II architecture at Palos Verdes Estates would certainly be comfortable in Beverly Hills where many counterparts appeared during the 1920s.

Variants permitted in materials and steeper roof pitches for Type II District houses are described in the Protective Restrictions of Record as the deed restrictions were legally referred:

A greater use of wood exterior finish may be approved than in Type I districts, with an accompanying latitude in steepness of roof pitch. The maximum allowable pitch for story and a half houses in Type II districts shall be forty (40) degrees, and for two-story houses forty-five (45) degrees maximum, preferably less.^Ref.43

District III: Northern Slopes of the Palos Verdes Hills

Figure 74: "Specimens of TYPE III Architecture"

As mentioned earlier, according to Type III definitions, revival styles for residential architecture could be built in the northern slopes of the Palos Verdes hills. Here architects had to deviate from the Californian Type I mandated for District I since it was not approved for District III. Variants in material were permitted here and the white stucco and tile roofs of the Mediterranean are not evident in the photograph of "Specimens of Type III Architecture." (Fig.74) Here the roofs were permitted a slope or pitch of up to sixty degrees, although they had to be in harmony with nearby buildings and the contour of the lot. In the hilly elevations, presumably steeply pitched roofs would not interfere with views from neighboring houses and the more individual styles permitted here would eventually become shrouded with trees.

The photographs of houses illustrating "Specimens of Type III Architecture" might also be built in Beverly Hills. The extreme pitch of the roof on the house by Robert D. Farquhar places the type in a northern climate, as do the shingle and shake roofs with their gables and dormer windows presented in the three examples by the firm of the brothers Pierpont and Walter S. Davis. The Davises were part of a circle of established Southern California architects building at Palos Verdes Estates and elsewhere. They were able to satisfy their fashionable clients' tastes with residential plans in several of the approved types at Palos Verdes Estates. Apparently the brothers anticipated the Southern California suburban land and building booms before and after World War I, and in 1915 they published a series of house plans under the title Ideal Homes in Garden Communities: A Book of Stock Plans.^Ref.44

Figure 75: Examples of Revival Residential Plans Figure 76: Plan of a Small House in Valmonte District of Palos Verdes Estates, H. Roy Kelley, Architect

The plans illustrated in the Davises' book included cost estimates for houses in the price range of $1200 to $10,000. The exteriors of the houses, except for the craftsman bungalow, are clearly derived from historical styles such as Dutch Colonial, English, and Spanish. (Fig.75) Many of the house drawings are rendered with palm trees and mountains in the background, indicating the California landscape.

Another architect working at Palos Verdes Estates, H. Roy Kelley, did a plan for a small Spanish type speculative house for the Valmonte district. (Fig.76) Its size and lack of features such as patios, terraces and servants' rooms, were most likely a result of the marketing of housing to the middle classes. Although at the beginning of the project, the developers planned Palos Verdes Estates for the upper classes, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. realized the need to build dwellings for those with more modest incomes. The smaller lots for these houses were located in districts with lower visibility. Kelley's one story stucco house, with a low-pitched tile roof, has an attached two-car garage, and looks very much like it would fit into any Los Angeles suburb of the day. Unlike a bungalow type to which it can be compared, the Kelley plan does not have a front porch, but like a bungalow, its entrance door leads directly into the living room. The standard floor plan has in common with a bungalow the arrangement of bedrooms with a bath on one side, and a living room, dining room, and kitchen on the other.

Figure 77: Elevation, "Plan No. 1004, A Little Four-Room Bungalow" Figure 78: Floor plan, "Plan No. 1004, A Little Four-Room Bungalow"

The Kelley plan, like the plans of the Davises, seems to anticipate suburban tract houses. It appears that the basis of most lower and middle class housing was the bungalow, popular because of its economy of space, simple plan and construction, and use of inexpensive materials. (Fig.77) (Fig.78) The bungalow was the early residential type built in the San Fernando Valley townsites, and were also among the first type built in Beverly Hills. Since bungalows were rather all American and did not fit any particular Mediterranean or Spanish Colonial Revival image, they did not appear at Palos Verdes Estates, except perhaps in Spanish trappings as illustrated by the Kelley plan or examples by the Davis brothers.

Architects such as the Davises, while not entirely inventive designers as their Southern California contemporaries, like Wallace Neff, Reginald Johnson or Gordon Kaufmann, were able to adapt to the prevailing Palos Verdes Estates design requirements, especially the so-called Californian or Spanish Colonial Revival types. They may have consulted books found in architects' offices in the 1920s, illustrating details of Spanish, Mexican, and Mediterranean architecture. Among them can be cited W. Sexton's Spanish Influence on American Architecture and Decoration (1926) and Rexford Newcomb's The Spanish House for America Its Design, Furnishing, and Garden (1927). Not only at Palos Verdes Estates, but in other upper class Los Angeles suburbs like Pasadena and San Marino during the 1920s, was there a demand for fashionable residences in a style quite suitable to the Mediterranean-like environment and topography.

A few architects practicing in Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s had a more avant-garde bent, which is to say they were Modernists. One intriguing question is: would the Palos Verdes Estates Art Jury have approved residential architecture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, or Richard Neutra if they knew the later impact of Modernism on the Southern California residential scene? Most likely not, evident from the fact that there is nothing at Palos Verdes Estates by them dating from the 1920s or 1930s. The same question might be asked of the residential architecture at Beverly Hills, but there are no examples of avant-garde designs built there during the 1920s and 1930s either.

In Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s, there was "non-conforming architecture" being built by Modernists, but there were no grand movements or schools, merely isolated and individualistic architects who came from other places and who were patronized sometimes by the wealthy, as exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright and his commission from Aline Barnsdall for the Hollyhock House in Hollywood (1917-1920).

A plan for a house at Palos Verdes Estates was done for Aline Barnsdall by the Viennese-born Rudolph. M. Schindler, considered a non-conforming architect at the period. The drawing of the "Translucent House (1927)," shows it situated directly (and precariously) on an ocean bluff, in Palos Verdes Estates District I. (Fig.79) To date it is not known if plans for the house were submitted to the Art Jury for approval, since it appears to deviate from the Type I specimen. The house is somewhat reminiscent of the Hollyhock House on which Schindler worked with Wright. There are a series of long horizontal, rectangular wings with battened walls set around a reflecting pool in a U-shape configuration. The house is planned for an irregular site with a series of terraces reached by steps connecting the levels. Areas of glass windows are placed in the upper walls and the roofs appear to hover over them.

Figure 79: Rendering, Rudolph Schindler, Architect, Aline Barnsdall Translucent House project for Palos Verdes Estates, 1927-1928

Figure 80: Drawing, Rudolph Schindler, Architect, H. N. von Koerber House, Hollywood Riviera, Torrance, 1931-1932

Another house by Schindler, the von Koerber house (1931), was built at the Hollywood Riviera development in Torrance, not far from Palos Verdes Estates. The planned community had a Spanish Colonial Revival theme, and David Gebhard comments that Schindler used Spanish Revival details, as "a most openly satirical comment." (Fig.80)

The rectangular geometry of the vertical surfaces of the house is uncompromisingly de Stijl; but the whole building is covered by what seems at first glance to be a confused array of tile-covered shed roofs, several of which pour their tile coverings over and down the adjacent walls.^Ref.45