GILL, IRVING 1870-1936

Architect

Modern Architect

Though he had no formal training in the field, Irving Gill became a pioneer of modern architecture. Unlike Victorian architects, Gill viewed a building's interior and the surrounding land as integral parts of the architecture. Aesthetically, he rejected the ornamentation and detail work of architectural historicism. He also cared about low-cost housing and about using the most modern materials in his buildings. Gill shared the concern of his fellow California architects, Charles Sumner and Henry Mather Greene, with craftsmanship; but unlike the Greene brothers, who designed intricate, handcrafted details for their buildings, Gill was led by his interest in craftsmanship into modernism—into simplifying his structures almost to the point of abstraction. Also influenced by the simple adobe forms of early California Spanish missions, he used new materials, especially reinforced concrete, to erect buildings with plain, clean surfaces and minimal ornamentation.

Early Life and Training

Gill was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1870. His only early training in architecture came from exposure to his father's work as a building contractor and a brief job in an architect's office. In 1890 he went to Chicago and went to work as a draftsman for the firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan; a fellow draftsman there was Frank Lloyd Wright. Vacationing in California in 1892, Gill fell in love with the state and decided to settle in San Diego.

Modernism Adrift

For several years Gill struggled to make a name for himself. His business grew in the early 1900s and hit a high-water mark in 1911. Throughout this period Gill refined his modernist vision of simple, economical concrete houses with little ornamentation and built-in labor-saving devices of his own design such as garbage disposals and vacuum cleaners. Among his better-known buildings were the five-story Wilson Acton Hotel (1908) and the Ellen Scripps House (1916) in La Jolla, California, and the Walter Luther Dodge House (1916) in Los Angeles. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and his half brother John Charles Olmsted, son and stepson, respectively, of the landscape architect who had designed New York's Central Park, appreciated Gill's modernism and the importance he placed on landscaping. After 1917, when California tastes turned to the Spanish Colonial style that had been popularized by the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915, the Olmsteds promoted Gill's flagging business by helping the architect secure work in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island. Collaborating with the Olmsteds, Gill designed the plans for a new industrial town, Torrance, near Los Angeles. Much to Gill's disappointment, of the hundreds of structures he had designed for the town, only a few small buildings, a railroad station, a bridge, and ten houses were built; and the houses were transformed into traditional wooden ones instead of the modern concrete homes he had envisioned.

Later Life

In 1928 Gill married and moved to Palos Verdes, then to Carlsbad, California. In 1929 and 1933 he suffered heart attacks. In the latter year he moved to Lakeside to build an Indian resettlement community at Rancho Barona. He died in 1936, largely forgotten.

Source:

Marcus Whiffen and Frederick Koeper, American Architecture, 1607-1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981).