Mullgardt, Louis Christian

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Mullgardt, Louis Christian (1866–1942). American architect of German descent. He was influenced by the Arts-and-Crafts movement after a visit to England (1904–5). Establishing his own office in San Francisco, CA, in 1906, he designed a timber-framed house around a brick chimney-core at Mill Valley, CA (1907), that had an Alpine flavour, but over the next few years the houses that made his name had stuccoed walls, low-pitched roofs, and long bands of mullioned windows, all in a style strongly reminiscent of Schinkel and ‘Greek’ Thomson. One of his most spectacular designs was the Henry W. Taylor House, Berkeley, CA (1908–10—destroyed). Later works were inventively and freely eclectic, such as the Theodore H. Davies Building, Honolulu, HI (1917–21), a vast concrete structure faced with faïence that recalled the Spanish Renaissance, freely treated. In the 1920s he produced a series of imaginative proposals for San Francisco, including habitable piers and bridges connected by 24-lane tiered motorways. None was realized.

Bibliography

ARe, xxx (Aug. 1911), 1117–34;
R. Clark (1966);
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxi/4 (Dec. 1962), 171–8;
Placzek (1982);
Jane Turner (1996)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Mullgardt, Louis Christian

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