Orange County

ModernA brief look at modern architecture

and development in Orange County, California from the 1920s through

the 1970s.

Eli Pousson, January 2012

Sources

Orange County Modern draws on a wide range of sources and im-ages compiled by dedicated fans of modern architecture in South-ern California. I’ve highlighted a few of the most useful sources below.

The Living New Deal - livingnewdeal.berkeley.eduModern San Diego - modernsandiego.comO.C. History Roundup - ochistorical.blogspot.com

About Orange County Modern

While on vacation in late December, I researched the history of modern architecture in Orange County with the goal of compiling an inventory of local modern landmarks. I produced this pamphlet in early January 2012 for a project known as Fun-A-Day Baltmore. I laid out two pages each day then made no further changes to those pages other than to re-order them within the collection.

Cover & Santa Ana, January 1Anaheim, January 2Newport Beach, January 3Irvine, January 4Orange, Fullerton, & Back Cover, January 5

Eli Pousson@elipoussonhistoricsprawl.wordpress.com/ocmodern

Santa AnaFounded in 1869, Santa Ana is the county seat with modern civic and com-merical buildings from the 1935 Art Deco Old Santa Ana City Hall through the Central Justice Center designed by Richard Neutra together with local architects Ramberg & Lowrey.

Central Justice Center - 1969700 West Civic Center DriveRichard Neutra, Ramberg & Lowrey

Old Santa Ana City Hall - 1935217 North Main Street (at 3rd)W. Horace Austin, Architect

Richard

Neutra

Orange County Public Law Library - 1971515 North Flower StreetAllen & Miller Architects

Born 1892 in Vienna, Austria, Richard Neutra came to Los Angeles in 1925 to work with architect Rudolf Schindler at the Kings Road House (1922) in Hollywood. His work in southern California from the 1920s through his death in 1970 helped define a geometric West Coast take on mid-century modern design including his Orange County projects - the Garden Grove Community Church (1961), the Mariners Medical Arts Building (1963) in Newport Beach, and the Huntington Beach Central Library (1975).

More Santa Ana Modern—Masonic Temple (1931, W. Horace Austin) - 501-505 North Sycamore StreetFormer Home Savings & Loan - Santa Ana Bank Branch - 3600 South Bristol Street North Broadway Law Building (Ramberg & Lowrey) - 2009 North Broadway

OC Archives

OC Archives

Living New Deal

Wikipedia

AnaheimIn the 1950s and 1960s, Anaheim build-ers and entrepeneurs made Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue into a showpiece of eclectic “Googie” or “Coffeeshop Modern” architecture with scores of hotels and restaurants within a few minutes of Disneyland (1955). As Anaheim has grown to become the larg-est city in Orange County, many modern landmarks have been lost or altered.

Monsanto House of the FutureDisneyland, 1957-1967Built by MIT

Stovall’s Space Age Lodge (1965) at 1110 W. Katella Avenue, now known as the Best Western Stovall’s Inn, is the one survivor of a chain of modern hotels built by Al Stovall, including the Inn of Tomorrow, the Galaxy, and the Cosmic Inn — all three now demolished.

More Anaheim Googie!

Anaheim Convention Center - 800 W. Katella AvenueCovered Wagon BBQ & Saloon (Formerly Van de Kamp’s) - 2191 S. Harbor Blvd.La Palma Chicken Pie Shop - 928 N. Euclid StreetLyndy’s Motel - 926 S. Beach Blvd.Miss Donuts Bakery - 616 W. La Palma AvenueParkside Inn (Formerly Eden Roc Motel) - 1830 S. West StreetSatellite Mobile Home Park (Entrance)- 1844 Haster Street

synthetrix.com

Aerial view of Disneyland, 1956Image courtesy the USC Regional Historical Photo Collection

Newport Beach

Rudolph

Schindler

Lovell Beach House (1926)1242 West Ocean Front

Completed in 1926, the Lovell Beach House on Balboa Island in Newport Beach is one of the most significant works by pioneering Southern California modernist architect Rudolf Schindler. His use of concrete, used previously on his own Kings Road House (1922) which is often considered the first modern-ist house in the US, predicted the later Brutalist style of unsurfaced concrete.

Born in Vienna in 1887, Schindler’s career paralleled Richard Neutra, as they both worked with Frank Lloyd Wirght and even lived together for years, but Schindler’s early work went largely unnoticed by most architects and critics.

LOC: HABS/HAER

Wikipedia

As an elegant destination for tour-ists and a home for celebrities from the 1920s through the pres-ent, Newport Beach has attract-ed a tremendous range of modern landmarks with the J. Herbert Brownell Office in 1954, the for-mer Stuft Shirt Restaurant by Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey in 1961 at 2241 West Coast High-way, and Neutra’s 1963 Mariners Medical Arts Center.

Fashion Island and Newport Cen-ter Drive offer a view of Orange County’s later modern design with the Irvine Company headquarters (1972 ) and the Pacific Life Build-ing (1972) by William L. Pereira & Associates, the the Newport Med-ical Plaza (1969-1971) by Welton Becket and Associates, and a 18-story high rise (1972) by Skid-more, Owings and Merril.

J. Herbert Brownell Office (1954)1950 West Coast Highway

Mariners Medical Arts Center (1963) 1901 Westcliff Drive

Modern San Diego

Flickr/ Trader Cris

Orange

From 1950 to 1974, Joseph Eichler built a na-tional reputation as the developer of some of the nation’s most unique midcentury modern tract housing, brining modernist design to the public.

Eichler built three tracts in the City of Orange, in addition to Granada Hills in Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks in Ventura County. For the three tracts in Orange-- Fairhaven, Fairhills, and Fairmeadows--EIchler worked with Los Angeles-based architects A. Quncy Jones & Frederick Emmons. Jones and Eichler first began their partnership in 1950 after both were featured in Archi-tectural Forum, awarding a Palo Alto development by Eichler “Subdivision of the Year” and a home designed by Jones “Builder’s House of the Year.”

Eichler tracts in Orange and a proximate intersection.Fairhaven (1960) — Briardale and CambridgeFairmeadows (1962) — Oakwood and WoodlandFairhills (1963) — Linda Vista and Elsinor

A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons Joe Eichler

Eichler NetworkEichler Network

CIty of Orange

Fullerton

More Fullerton Modern

Arcadia Metal Products Headquarters (1955), 801 S. Acacia AvenueFrederick E. Emmons & A. Quincy Jones

Fullerton City Hall (1963), 237 W. Commonwealth AveSmith, Powell & Morgridge

Fullerton - Hunt Branch Library (1960), , 201 S. Basque AvenueWilliam Periera

CSU Fullerton - Pollak Library South (1966), 800 N State College BoulevardHoward van Heuklyn

In 1954, Joseph Eichler, along with Jones & Emmons, appeared on the “House that Home Built” segment of the NBC Home tele-vision show and offered to provide house plans (previously de-signed for Eichler) to any developer that could come up with $200. Local builder Pardee-Phillips sought out the plans and built over 250 homes across three tracts from 1953 and 1956--known now as Fullerton Grove.

Fullerton Grove (1953-1956)A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons architects

Pardee-Phillips builder

Photo by Julius Shulman, courtesy Fullerton Heritage

William L. Pereira’s prolific de-sign legacy has shaped the modern landscape of Orange County more than any other sin-gle architect. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pereira’s firm completed over 250 projects including the master plan for the development of the 93,000 acre City of Irvine — an effort that laneded Pereira on the cover of Time Magazine in 1963. The modernist aesthet-ic of his design for the UC Irvine Campus appeared in the 1972 “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” with the campus standing in for “Ape City.” Pereira often used pyrimidal forms in his buildings including his most famous the Transamerica Pyramid (1972) in San Francisco and the Chet Holfield Federal Building (1971) in Laguna Hills.

More from William L. Pereira and Associates—

Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel at Disneyland (1965)Hunt Branch Library (1962), FullertonLaguna Playhouse (1964), Laguna BeachUnion Bank of California (1965), Orange

Irvine

“Therefore it is not a question of whetherwe are to build or not build, for build

we must, it is our character.”William L. Pereira

Chet Holifield Federal Building (1971)24000 Avila Road, Laguna Niguel

Orange County was one of the fastest growing counties in the nation during the mid 20th-century with a population that tripled from 216,000 to 703,000 in the 1950s, doubling again to 1.4 million during the 1960s.

Planning for the City of Irvine and the University began in 1959, when the Irvine Company donated 1,000 acres to the University of California who then commissioned architect William Pereira was to design the campus and create a master plan for the city of Irvine. In 1960, the Irvine Company hired Bay Area architect Ray Watson as the city’s first planner charged together with Pereira with guiding the development of the Master Plan for a commu-nity later promoted as “the place where urban sprawl ends” — organized, convenient, clean and modern.

Village of Woodbridge, 1972Photo courtesy The Irvine Company

LOC: HABS/HAER

This pamphlet is best used as an inspiration to go take a closer look at Southern California’s unique modern architecture from Art Deco to Brutalism and everything in between.

Look inside for—Richard Neutra in Santa AnaGoogie in AnaheimRudolf Schindler in Newport BeachJoseph Eichler in Orange & FullertonWilliam L. Periera in Irvine

Cover image courtesy the Orange County Archives.