Irving Gill

Irving John Gill (1870 - 1936), American architect, is considered a pioneer of the modern movement in architecture. He designed several buildings considered examples of San Diego's best architecture. [ [http://www.sandiegohistory.org/bio/gill/gill.htm Gill biography at sandiegohistory.org] ]

Biography

Gill was born in Tully, New York (near Syracuse), the son of Joseph Gill, a carpenter and farmer.

Irving Gill had no formal education in architecture and never attended college. He apprenticed to architect Ellis G. Hall in Syracuse and then moved to Chicago, Illinois, working with Joseph Lyman Silsbee and later and more importantly under Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan there. Frank Lloyd Wright was working in the Adler & Sullivan firm at this time as well. Gill's biggest assignment there was work on the Transportation Building for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

He moved to San Diego, California in 1893, for health reasons, and immediately started his own architectural practice, specializing in large residences in eclectic styles. He had an 11-year partnership with William S. Hebbard that produced good work, important to San Diego County history but less known nationally.

Gill's 1907 partnership with Frank Mead, which lasted less than a year and completed only 4 houses was a time of some of his best work. The important Bailey, Allen, Laughlin and M. Klauber residences were completed by this partnership.

In 1911, Irving Gill's nephew Louis Gill joined Irving's firm as a draftsman, later he was to be promoted to partner. Gill (known as Jack to his friends) became a pioneer in rational, early modernist design for residences and commercial buildings.

In 1911 Gill lost an important commission for the Panama-California Exposition (1915) to Bertram Goodhue but did some early work as an associate under Goodhue. Gill started living and mainly working in Los Angeles county after this time although the Gill & Gill partnership lasted until 1919. Irving Gill returned to live in North San Diego county in the 1920s. Gill's work slowed considerably after 1920 or so due to lingering illness, changing public tastes, and a lessening desire to compromise with clients. After the late 1920s, his work added certain moderate Art Deco or "Moderne" touches.

Gill was commissioned by Ellen Browning Scripps to design the La Jolla Woman's Club building. This prominently sited building (1912-14) is considered one of Gill's masterpieces. It was similar to his other works, simple in style. Gill used the "tilt-slab" construction technique to assemble the exterior walls on-site. This building was the first tilt-up concrete building in California, and despite Gill's association with this building method, he used it in only a handful of structures. The exterior arcade walls only on this building were build with this method, the interior and pop-up center portions were constructed with normal balloon framing. The concrete in the tilted walls in this building was augmented with infill of hollow clay blocks to lighten the weight of the slab.

The most prominent Gill-designed project is probably the Electric Fountain in the center of Horton Plaza Park, in downtown San Diego. Despite being designed in the prime of his modernist period, it is atypical of his work, being in a revivalist style. Gill's design was chosen in a competition among professional architects, and was one of the first projects in the country to combine water and color electrical light effects.

Importance

Irving Gill was concerned with the social impact of good architecture, and worked with equal skill and interest on projects for bankers and mayors as he did on projects for reservation Indians, an African American church, and for migrant Mexican workers and their children.

Gill's mature period work, described in publications as "cubist" in his time, was concerned with removing most unnecessary detailing, for reasons of economy and hygiene. Gill's interiors are known for minimal or flush mouldings, simple (or no) fireplace mantles, coved floor to wall transitions, enclosed-side bathtubs, frequent skylights, plastered walls with only the occasional, but featured, wood elements, flush five-piece doors, frequent concrete or magnesite floors, and a general avoidance of cracks, ledges, and unnecessary material changes.

Aesthetically, Gill's best work of the 1910s is identified by: flat roofs with no eaves, a unity of materials (mostly concrete), casement windows with transoms above, white or near-white exterior and interior walls, cube or rectangular massing, frequent ground-level arches or series of arches creating transitional breezeways in the manner of the California missions.

Despite frequent recent references to Gill as "forgotten" or "unappreciated " he was reasonably well documented during his life. For example, his work was more frequently published in Gustav Stickley's "Craftsman" magazine than any other Western architect, including the Greene & Greene firm.

Gill's reputation did quickly fade after his death, and it languished until he was included in the 1960 book "Five California Architects" by Esther McCoy and Randell L. Makinson. This book (still in print) helped to renew interest in his work, and in early California architecture in general, and in the decades since its publication Irving Gill has come to be recognized as a major figure in the modern movement.

elected projects

* 1904-05: George W. Marston House (with W.S. Hebbard), San Diego, CA
* 1906: Katherine Teats House [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA0612))) Katherine Teats House at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] , San Diego, CA
* 1908-: The first buildings at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA
* 1910: F. B. Lewis Courts (aka Bella Vista Terrace) [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA3076))) Bella Vista Terrace at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] , Sierra Madre, CA
* 1910-16: La Jolla Recreation Center, La Jolla, CA
* 1911: Miltimore House [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA0300))) Miltimore House at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] , Pasadena, CA
* 1912-: La Jolla Women's Club [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA0570))) La Jolla Women's Club at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] , La Jolla, CA
* 1912-: The Bishop's School, La Jolla, CA
* 1913: Ellen Browning Scripps residence, La Jolla, CA, now remodeled as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego)
* 1914-16: Walter L. Dodge House [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA0221))) Dodge House at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] in West Hollywood, CA (demolished)
* 1919: Horatio West Court [ [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?pp/hh:@FIELD(DOCID+@BAND(@lit(CA0298))) Horatio West Court at Historic American Buildings Survey] ] , Santa Monica, CA
* 1919: Clarke Estate [ [http://www.santafesprings.org/about/history/clark_estate/clark_estate.asp Clark Estate at santafesprings.org] ] , Santa Fe Springs, CA

References

Other sources

*cite book
last = Hines
first = Thomas S.
title = Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform: A Study in Modernist Architectural Culture
publisher = Monacelli
date = 2000
isbn = 1580930166
*cite book
last = Kamerling
first = Bruce
title = Irving J. Gill, Architect
publisher = San Diego Historical Society
date = 1993
isbn = 0918740169
*cite book
last = McCoy
first = Esther
title = Five California Architects
publisher = Reinhold Publishing
date = 1960
** reprinted in 1975 by Praeger

External links

* [http://www.irvinggill.com/ Irving Gill Central]