Architect before his time

By Michael Good | Columnista SDUN

Irving J. Gill, San Diego’s greatest architect, considered himself a man of the people. While he courted rich clients at the Hotel Del and built them mansions such as the Marston House in Bankers Hill, he was most proud of the simple, plain and efficient worker housing he built in Hillcrest, South Park and throughout Southern California.

So when Gill was summoned, in 1913, to a meeting of the workers who were building the model industrial city of Torrance, which he designed, you’d think he would have been warmly welcomed. Instead Gill found himself in the middle of a riot.

Over his career, which began in San Diego in 1893, Gill was obsessed with simplicity. Instead of wood floors made of hundreds of strips of oak and thousands of nails, instead of raised foundations (prone to becoming living quarters for rats, cats, possums and raccoons), Gill built houses on concrete slabs. Instead of wood framing and siding, he built walls of hollow clay tile and stucco. Roofs were made of long-lasting clay tile, rather than wood shingles. He also built some houses, such as the Ellen Scripps house in La Jolla (now the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art), with tilt-up concrete walls, much like the industrial buildings of today.

Gill, the son of a Quaker contractor, approached home design with an almost religious zeal, as if good design were a moral matter and a dirty floor could lead to a life of sin. “In the recent houses that I have built,” Gill wrote in Gustav Stickley’s monthly magazine, The Craftsman, “the walls are finished flush with the casings and the line where the wall joins the flooring is slightly rounded, so that it forms one continuous piece with no place for dust to enter or to lodge, or crack for vermin of any kind to exist. There is no molding for pictures, plates or chairs, no baseboard, paneling or wainscoting to catch and hold the dust…. In some of the houses all windows and door frames are of steel.”

It was this elimination of detail that got Gill in trouble with the very people who were to build and live in his modern and efficient worker housing. (Gill priced his houses at $1,400 and required only 10 percent down—making them well within the budget of the average Torrance worker.) This newly minted Los Angeles suburb had been declared a worker’s city, the first in the nation where the concerns of the workingman, not the bosses, were foremost. But the workingmen at that town hall meeting in 1913 felt they had been ignored and abused. Where Gill saw less-tedious work, the laborers saw no work at all. Where Gill saw laborsaving convenience, the workers saw a convenient way to eliminate the laborer. Gill could be a persuasive speaker, but this time he found his audience “hostile and unrelenting.”

In the end, the workers won. Only a few of Gill’s innovative houses were built, and over the years even those were modified beyond recognition. The rest of the worker housing in Torrance was built in the bungalow style of the era, with stick framing and wood siding, lathe and plaster walls and wood windows and trim. Gill went on to other projects, many successful, but he never again had the opportunity to design an entire city. He died in relative obscurity, surviving during the Depression by picking and selling avocados from his wife’s property in Carlsbad. Among his last projects were simple houses for the Barona Indian Reservation, and a jail for Oceanside, which he outfitted with a central skylight, to give the inmates a little sunshine and fresh air. Not surprisingly, the skylight was later roofed over. On his death certificate, Gill’s occupation was listed as “laborer,” showing that his heart was still with the common man.

Obviously, Irving Gill was ahead of his time. If he proposed such radical, labor-saving innovations today, he’d be hoisted on the workers’ shoulders and paraded around the building site like a conquering hero. Today’s construction worker wants less demanding work, and today’s contractor wants cheaper materials. In a sense, the history of modern home construction has been all about substituting cheaper materials and methods for the way they did it in the old days—not that anyone building houses today remembers the old days.

Which is why today’s construction worker is often flummoxed by the requirements of restoring an old house. And why the modern owner of a not-very-modern home is often frustrated when trying to find someone to restore, repair or simply maintain his or her abode. The skills and the temperament required to restore old houses are different from those required to build them in the first place. After all, David Owen Dryden, one of San Diego’s more celebrated designer-builders, took only three weeks to build a house in 1911. In 2011, you couldn’t replicate, replace and refinish the windows in a typical Dryden house in that amount of time. If Dryden were alive today, he’d probably be building custom houses in La Jolla, not restoring historic bungalows in North Park.

If you’re looking for just the right guy to repair whatever it is that’s bothering you about your old house (and who isn’t), and you’re kicking yourself for having missed this year’s Old House Fair, which brings old house experts and homeowners together in the same spot every June in South Park, you can still take advantage of the Old House Fair’s resource list, which you’ll find at theoldhousefair.weebly.com. SOHO also offers an excellent resource guide, and neighborhood associations, such as Mission Hills Heritage, are also good sources for references. Or visit the selective list of craftspeople from this year’s event at sduptownnews.com. They’re the sort of workers Gill would celebrate, and they probably wouldn’t throw him out on his ear if he offered to build them a house—especially for $1400.

ventanas
History has proven Irving Gill right—most windows today are of metal, not wood. (Even high-end wood windows by Anderson and other modern manufacturers are clad in metal.) Nevertheless, wood windows can last virtually forever—provided you maintain the finish and putty. When that hasn’t happened, call San Diego Sash (619) 944-8283. (Or email [email protected].) Proprietor Shawn Woolery can build authentic replicas of your wood windows, as well as replicate wood trim and doors, from his modern shop (using antique equipment) in El Cajon. If your windows need replacing, not repair, he can refer you to someone who can take care of that as well.

Floors
The crucial question for any old floor is whether it can bear to be sanded another time. Most floors in San Diego were thin to start with, and can only handle three sandings over their lifetime. In the 1960s and ’70s, floor sanders were a little to easy to rent in San Diego’s bungalow neighborhoods, and most floors were sanded—badly—during that era by cheapskate landlords. If your floors are too thin to handle another sanding, they can be “screened” (using a floor buffer) or stripped (a laborious process), or replaced. Top Flooring, which both installs new floors and repairs old, can help you make the decision. Plus they have a really cool mobile showroom. Call (858) 354-3142 or email [email protected].

Wood Trim
The same cheapskate landlords that did such a bad job refinishing North Park rentals in the 1970s also thought they were modernizing bungalows by tearing out built-in china cabinets and bookcases. When they weren’t doing that, they took the doors off the bookcases. Finding someone to remake those doors exactly as they were and fit them into no-longer-plumb openings can take years of frustration. Or you can just call Van Dusen Millworking (619) 443-7689. Bill will help you figure out what your missing doors looked like and build new replicas to the same specifications. He also can replace missing millwork (picture and chair rails, baseboards and bookcases). Email: [email protected].

Leaded Glass
It’s really rare to find leaded glass still intact in San Diego houses today. That’s not because it was never there; it’s because it is fragile, heavy, and people like to throw it away. Lisa at Verre Designs, (858) 220-3282, 808 Fort Stockton Dr. #1A, 92103, seems to be a good fit for old house owners. She was trained in the Old Country, has a nice aesthetic sense, and can replicate broken or missing art glass. Email: [email protected].

Antique Kitchen Stoves
The nice thing about kitchen stoves from the ’40s and ’50s is that they’re built like tanks. The not-nice thing is that they’re built like tanks, and picking up a tank is a pain. While these streamlined tributes to the American steel industry can last forever, they can also require some maintenance, and it requires some special knowledge and a strong back to work on them. There are basically three people who do this kind of work in San Diego. One of them is Ben’s Vintage Stoves, 1620 B St., 91950, (619) 424-7810. In addition to service and repair, Ben’s also does complete restorations, including re-chroming and enameling. Or you can just buy a completely restored antique. Email: [email protected].