Below is an article by Pierluigi Serraino. He is the author of several influential books on Mid-Century modern architecture. The article was pulled from the newsletter to give you a feel for the content. This issue of the newsletter we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 60’s. It is a real treat to have Pierluigi contribute content to this site and the AIASJ newsletter. Please give it a read and leave a comment.
The newsletter is meant to keep the chapter members and general public up to date with what is happening in the chapter. The printed copies are available at local architecture firms. You can also download the PDF.
Contents
Fresno Architecture @ Mid-Century 1
Message from the President | Extras 2
Feature Article – Mid-Century (cont’d) 3
Feature Article – Poetry in Concrete and Democracy at Work 4
Brian Lane Lecture Recap | Design Education; Then & Now 5
Firm Profile – Darden | Member Profile – Tom Key 6
Project Profile – First Western Bank 7
Feature Article – See Hear: Fresno Arts & Music Circa 1960s 8
Gov’t Affairs: 20 Years of the ADA | Engineering 9
in other words | Feature Article – Poetry (cont’d) 10
Emerging Professionals News 11
Calendar of Events 12
Fresno Architecture @ Mid-Century
By Pierluigi Serraino
To those harboring serious interest in American Mid-Century Modern, it might come as a surprise that to date a comprehensive history of California Modernism is still missing. The Golden State justly boasts many records and its contribution to 20th and 21st century architecture makes those claims largely legitimate. But as vast as California is, from the available records it would appear that Los Angeles is really the center of this revolution of architectural space. Like with all truisms, the distribution of this legacy is a far more complicated affair. In this respect, as a setting of systematic research, Fresno suffers the same neglect as Sacramento, Bakersfield, and San Luis Obispo, for example.
This reawakening can only be welcomed because this inventory of remarkable buildings is in fact an endangered species. Often the parcels where these designs are located have increased so much in value that especially for private homeownerships it makes perfect sense to raze the property and build a brand-new one. The glitch in this logic is that in fact these properties are of great value, culturally and architecturally. Their recognition as significant pieces of the collective memory of the place does increase also their property value.
The single-family house can be viewed as the archetype of California Modernism. Most of the masterpieces typically associated with the era are residential, although all built-forms underwent complete rethinking after World War II. However, houses are private worlds, mostly inaccessible to the general public and therefore more often than not invisible to the world. In this residential crack, so to speak, a large amount of landmarks go forgotten, undetected even by the most committed scholars. Fresno’s absence from the history book can be largely attributed to this phenomenon. Built accomplishments by Ernest Kump, Harwell Hamilton Harris and Cliff May have already been tracked down and appraised by the local community. However the examples discussed here offer a glimpse of their magic as well as their obscurity.
Ames Residence Mid-Century Modern Architecture Fresno
Architect Morgan Shaw of Berkeley, designed a Usonian residence in Fresno built in 1955 for Dr. and Mrs. Sidney S. Ames. Although not listed in the directory of members of the Taliesin Fellowship, Shaw undoubtedly embraced the aesthetic of Frank Lloyd Wright, producing a pinwheel plan whose center is the entry to four functional wings extending into the landscape. Within the organic language of architecture, modern residential design of the post-war period came with its standard architectural moves and Shaw followed suit: modular plan, indoor-outdoor amenities, clerestory windows, custom-designed built-in furniture, and deep overhangs. Walls of concrete masonry units are the counterpoints to striation of redwood siding to implement the horizontality Wright so much strived for. Despite savvy siting in relation to the solar path, air conditioning was necessary to meet the clients’ requirements for comfort. Virtually nothing is known about Morgan Shaw, no address is given about this house, and current information on its state is unavailable. (Shaw, 1955)
Similarly, William Sutherland Beckett, a maverick from Los Angeles completed two designs in Fresno: the Fern Residence of 1957 and the Penn-Wald Residence of 1963. Their respective design expression reflects the changes occurred between the different dates of construction. The former is a single story house with exposed posts and beams, whose ends extend beyond the edges of the quasi-paper thin flat roofs they are supporting. With a grand surrounding garden, the space appears transparent to sightlines penetrating from the exterior to the interior to the exterior again. The latter appears even lighter in the massing. The structural frames travel in space to become landscape elements suggesting virtual bigger enclosures. The common quarters are located in a taller pavilion that the rest of the house, providing sweeping views to the dwellers. Even in this case virtually no information is available on both houses and the archives of the architect are nowhere to be found. (Serraino & Shulman, 2000)
In the August 15, 1949 issue of Time magazine, an article titled “Modern Houses…Across the U.S.” lists a number of well-known residences by famous architects, including a house in Fresno by noted Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons. Its main feature was a 17-ft. ceiling at the lowest cost of all the designs surveyed: $11,402. Pitched roofs, porches, plain treatment of the vertical surfaces make this project a classic within the output of William Wilson Wurster, whose surviving contemporaries claimed to be an architect of very expensive unassuming single-family homes. While neither specifics are given about the location house in the article nor its actual conditions are known, the Hunter Apartments of 1962 is another project in Fresno listed in the Oral History of the architect. Given that Wurster’s office authored over 500 private homes during its long existence, it would be no surprise if other houses are to be found in the same area (TIME, 1949).
Ames Residence Exterior - photo by Michelle Smith
In the commercial realm, a clothing store by Albert Henry Hill completed in 1947 caught the national attention for the ingenuity of its space planning. The owner of an existing extra long and narrow shop bought the adjacent property of similar proportion doubling its square footage. Hill, a British-born Bay Area based architect graduated from Harvard under Gropius, scripted this linear void with a series of curvaceous screens, starting from the recessed entry from the main street all the way to the back where the administrative team is located. This idea of creating an actual space between the public realm of the city and the private domain of the store was a hallmark of many popular designs by Gruen & Krummeck, widely imitated in the United States. This is the case of a design that although significant at the time of its completion failed to leave a mark because the space itself has undergone further physical change and therefore is no longer visible in its original form (Hill, 1947).
Unquestionably, there is a lot more in Fresno and its surrounding areas than these few examples aforementioned. The acknowledgement, preservation and adaptive reuse of this heritage is at its infancy, since theoretical clarity on how to deal with unique portion of the built environment is far from being reached. Also, Mid-Century Modern is a unique period in that a number of architects that participated in the construction of that mythological era are still with us and can provide critical information that needs to be recorded for later use. Photographic archives are probably the most content-rich sources of information as not all buildings of merit have been published, but certainly all buildings have been photographed. This such wide-ranging effort is the stepping stone to demonstrate the extensive participation of all California to the immensity of its still largely unexplored modernism.
Bibliography
Albert Henry Hill, Architect. “Dress Shop. Experiments with Customer Reaction to Good Modern Design.” The Architectural FORUM, July 1947.
Morgan Shaw, Architect. “California Residence. Dr. & Mrs Sidney S. Ames, Fresno, California.” Architect and Engineer, July 1955: 9-13.
Serraino, Pierluigi, Shulman, Julius. Modernism Rediscovered. 1st Edition. Cologne: Taschen, 2000.
TIME. “Modern Houses …Across the U.S.” August 15, 1949: 60-1.
