J. R. Davidson - A European Contribution to California Modernism

J. R. Davidson, short for Julius Ralph Davidson, was born in Berlin in 1889, left Germany in 1923, and came, via spells in London and Paris, to the USA. Today he is largely known as the architect of Thomas Mann’s house in Pacific Palisades. However, there is a lot more to discover. A contemporary of Richard Neutra, with whom he was often in competition, his architecture is very different. Based in Los Angeles, he designed storefronts, shop interiors, hotels, restaurants, and furniture, noted both for their serenity and their originality. of colors and materials, and a distinct and unique use of indirect lighting and customized lamps. Altogether, Davidson created more than 150 buildings and projects, working in the International Style but also

Esther McCoy

in Mid-Century Modern. In Los Angeles, he designed three houses for the experimental Case Study House Program, each distinguished by its efficient layout.

Typical of his residences—still of timeless elegance—is a dedicated private outdoor space for each resident.

This long overdue publication is a comprehensive documentation of Davidson’s life and work, highlighting J. R.’s contribution to Modernism in California in the 1930s and 1940s. It describes a selection of some 30 buildings and projects in detail, drawing on the historic plans and in particular on images taken by renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman. These pictures are complemented by new photography of the houses that still exist today. In his later years, Thomas Mann said about his residence “Seven Palms” in Pacific Palisades: “The house was so completely my own.”

www.birkhauser.com

J. R. Davidson

J. R. Davidson

a smooth transition from interior to exterior, as well as

For a house, I want to achieve serenity and cheerfulness. Most people value these in a house, but few clients understand the plan features which produce them. Serenity is achieved through an order.

The continuous line is the restful one.

Lilian Pfaff

His interiors are characterized by an interesting choice

J. R. Davidson searched for the ideal floor plan which expanded the life within. His innovations often produced a loose-fitting envelope around a perfect floor plan.

Lilian Pfaff

J. R. Davidson A European Contribution to California Modernism

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1 MODERNISM

The European Years 1903–1923: Davidson’s Education

and His Notebooks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Emigration to the United States 1923. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

First Commissions: Retail Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

During the Great Depression: Hotels and

Bars in Chicago and Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Furniture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

Davidson’s Contemporaries and Collaborators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

European Ideas about Living. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

International Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Case Study Houses: Adaptive Reuse of Floor Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

2 REGIONALISM

Soft Modernism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Bungalow and Ranch House: Adopting Local Building Typology. . . . . . . . . . . 189

Mid-Century Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Public Buildings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

3

CONCLUSION

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 List of Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Illustration Credits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

36 J. R. Davidson

Emigration to the United States 1923 In 1923, with inflation paralyzing Berlin, the Davidsons sold their home for $8,500 on December 12th. Three days later, after transferring the money to an American bank account, they left Germany via Hamburg on the S. S. “Albert Ballin.” Following their arrival in New York on December 31st, the couple stayed for three weeks with Grete’s colleague Kate Goldberg and her husband Dan. The next day, on January 1, 1924, J. R. officially registered in the United States as Julius Ralph Davidson.

Grete soon began to use the name Greta as that seemed more in tune with the English-speaking environment. To help him find a job in New York, the Goldbergs introduced him to various architects. Despite this, he decided, however, to move to Los Angeles. As McCoy suggests, this may have had to do with the German architect Kem Weber. After working for Bruno Paul on the construction of the German Pavilion for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Weber got stuck in the U.S. during the First World War and finally moved to Los Angeles in 1921. It is highly likely that Davidson had heard about Weber from Bruno Paul.

Contrary to what one might expect, Davidson did not make sketches of early New York skyscrapers, but focused his attention on Spanish Renaissance buildings, Mexican tiles and residential structures. (Fig. 23) He studied Mexican architecture at the Hispanic Society as well as at the Architectural League of New York and lists numerous books on the subject in his notebook (1924), (Fig. 25) as if it were a kind of preparation for Los Angeles. The notes include a storefront with a very simple glass showcase design featuring indirect lighting. (Fig. 24) He may have traveled to Los Angeles via Chicago, since he drew the façade of the Art Institute of Chicago.62 At age 36, Davidson arrived in Los Angeles, where he worked for nine months for the architect Robert D. Farquhar, who at that time was building the UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Davidson was put in charge of the interior design of the archival area, work involving the shelves and their lighting. When Farquhar left town in 1925, he made inquiries with movie director Cecil B. DeMille, who had just started his own business, to see if Davidson could work as a set designer for the movie The Golden Bed. Davidson then spent two years working for MGM in Hollywood. Under the art director Cedric Gibbons, he worked on the movie “It,” which propelled “It Girl” actress Clara Bow to stardom. From 1942 on, he created sets for Paramount Studios, probably for the documentary movie The Hitler Gang (1944), where he had to recreate the Reichstag fire. The exact date remains unclear, as the daughter-in-law of J. R. talks about a participation before leaving to Chicago around 1933. The Paramount ID of Davidson is from the year 1942. (Fig. 26)63

50 J. R. Davidson

After a trip on the French luxury liner “Île de France” (1928), Bruno Paul became fascinated with Art Deco’s light effects and use of mirrors. In considering the wall division in his restaurant for Tierney & Co, Davidson had similar ideas. (Fig. 45) An early project (ca.

1927), this restaurant with its coffee bar in red and black Art Deco patterns and with glass showcases, was a beautiful design, but it is unknown if it was ever realized. The entire setting is also comparable to Kem Weber’s Art Deco concept in his Rainbow Isle Restaurant at the Mayfair Hotel, Los Angeles (1926– 1927). Unfortunately, we can only compare the interiors, since no drawings exist of Davidson’s façade. As indicated in the red and black sketch, the design Fig. 43 Satyr Book Shop, Los Angeles, 1929. Interior

of wallpapers and lamps, as well as of

with special lighting

furniture and color arrangement is more reminiscent of the original Nikabob Restaurant dining room by Morgan, Walls & Clements (1926), for which Davidson designed the menu card, than of a light and airy café.

(Fig. 46) The Art Deco-inspired interior of the Tierney & Co. Restaurant is similar to the new interior decor of the Los Angeles Bullocks Wilshire Department Store, co-designed by Jock D. Peters, a fellow German.79 Earlier, in 1926, P. G. Win-

Fig. 44 Jock D. Peters, Bullocks Wilshire Department Store, Los Angeles, 1926. Interior of perfume hall

nett had commissioned the highly respected interior designer Eleanore De Maire to retrofit the Downtown department store. De Maire, in turn, hired Peters. In addition, she employed various

MODERNISM 51

Fig. 45 Tierney & Co. Restaurant and Café-Bar, Los Angeles, ca. 1927 (probably project)

artists (including Sonia Delauney) for the Bullocks Wilshire interior design. Overseen by Feil & Paradise as well as by Peters, the lobby on the ground floor was designed in collaboration with the artists.

There was no lack of enthusiastic reaction, once the two-million-dollar department store opened. In the words of Pauline Schindler: “Bullocks Wilshire is a significant contribution to the culture of our generation. It will effect a revolutionary development in taste in southern California, which will eventually penetrate to the more conservative north, and will strongly modify the development of architecture.”80 Behind the store entrance by the Bauhaus style elevators, the customer reached the cosmetics concourse, which Peters “accented with light panels with vertical, metallic stripes, creating a soft glow and welcoming ambience.”81 (Fig. 44) In the Bullocks Wilshire Saddle Shop, Peters used panels in different colors and cubist elements on both ceiling and floor, reminiscent in their simplicity of Art Deco. He decorated the men’s department in a ‘concrete block style’ suggesting Frank Lloyd Wright, who was then very much en vogue. “There was an emphasis on rectilinear forms, with rough, tanned plastered walls juxtaposed with patterned borders.”82 The space was set up as a two-level vertical structure that provided an airy impression, while the display area was organized in a private intimate way.

One of the most well-known rooms is the Furs Atelier, specially known for its use of materials:

52 J. R. Davidson

“[C]ork board walls, dull pink ceiling and oyster-gray center panels. The floor was designed in checkered random blocks, and seats were covered in brilliant coral velour edged with Chinese vermilion. Opal glass lanterns with silver rings and black tassels hung from the ceiling.”83

Less important floors were completed by other interior designers, but even those had an innovative and elegant appearance.

Storefront, 3925–3931 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, 1929 With Bullocks Wilshire in close proximity, Davidson’s work underwent a substantial push toward modernization— Fig. 46 Redesign of Nikabob menu card, 1928

as becomes evident when comparing the stores on West 7th Street from

1926–1927 with those on Wilshire Boulevard from 1929. After 1935, more changes, including streamline-shaped forms, began to appear.

In the case of the Preissman & Co. Real Estate Office (1929), Davidson used significantly more glass than before as well as clear shapes and lines. He applied these in simpler façade designs, typically just signage above the window front, surrounded by thin metal frames. In many instances, a display window right next to the entrance door created a lit-up front allowing for good views into the elongated stores.

A never-realized 1929 design for a pharmacy positioned the store on a street corner, featuring a dichromatically backlit façade.84 In doing so, Davidson followed emerging ideas for a new store design: corner stores work best when separate entrances on more than one side allow for the largest possible display and better indoor light.85 In addition, the entire façade was to be made of glass. Concave set-backs offered sufficient surface for display purposes in his proposal.

Davidson’s next project in 1931, also a pharmacy but integrated into the Drive-in Curb Market, was in striking contrast. Although designed a little later, the 1931 plan is much more conventional both in typeface and window design, with the middle window protruding toward the corner. (Fig. 47)

58 J. R. Davidson

Fig. 54 Lora Lee Dress Shop, Hollywood, 1932. The staggered shop windows, illuminated by night

The store, Lederer de Paris (1939), was easy to miss, and so Gruen framed the façade, which opened to an illuminated rectangular arcade leading inside. This encouraged passers-by to find their way into the store, while also adding more display space. As a result, the simple and unassuming appearance attracted quite some attention. For the business next door, Ciro, he created a curvilinear entrance passage, intriguing pedestrians by dramatically spotlighting the few select pieces of jewelry in the window display.

120 J. R. Davidson

Fig. 133 Herbert Stothart House. Presentation drawing of the living room

Fig. 134 Herbert Stothart House. View from second floor onto the pool and trellis

MODERNISM 121

Fig. 135 Herbert Stothart House. A trellis over the terrace and on the side of the windows provides shade.

REGIONALISM 161

There are various reasons why the whole discussion with regard to William Wurster had become so tense. For one thing, there was the criticism by the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland of an architectural style coined as “The International Style” by MoMA’s 1932 exhibition. The question arose as to whether the International Style did not, in fact, address specific local and regional production concerns. How this tied in with the Gleichschaltung under the Nazis, i.e. their attempt to homogenize design styles if not an entire society, cannot be analyzed here.

Another issue that concerned the symposium was how the simple architectural idiom of a William Wurster, which made the architect redundant, would tackle public buildings. Barr, and others, made the point that when it came to public building, everyone resorted to the International Style again.

The symposium’s results did not influence Californian Architecture and would only be ascertained14 two years later in the San Francisco exhibition “The Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area.”15 This exhibition confirmed the symposium’s assertion that a unique and modern Northern California style incorporated regional contexts and traditions. It is worth mentioning that steel companies like Bethlehem Steel were promoting typical “modern” materials such as steel and aluminum for single-family homes, while the California Redwood Association supported the efforts of a regional school in the Bay Area.

An important backdrop to this discussion is that the “Bay Region Style, became an outpost of national identity in architecture.”16 Mumford also argued that the characteristics of American architecture were in danger of disappearing. “The Bay Area turned into an instrumental and timely example reasserting the presence of a distinctive idiom in American architecture that owed nothing to the European tradition.”17 In the same vein, Pierluigi Serraino concluded his text about the alienation between International Style and Regionalism as follows: “Regionalism was the reaction to the consciousness of the Modernist vision; by playing up the native character of the land, European Modernism was kept at a distance.”18

Thomas Mann House, Pacific Palisades, 1941 Davidson’s Thomas Mann House exemplifies nicely moderate Modernism and also what can be characterized as “gemütlich” and “German.” Recognized in his lifetime as one of the greatest German writers, Thomas Mann was awarded the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, he and his family emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 and received Czechoslovakian citizenship and passports in 1936. In 1939, following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to the United States. Mann entered the U.S. as visiting professor to the University of Princeton. In July 1940, he and his wife Katia traveled by train to the

170 J. R. Davidson

Fig. 8 Thomas Mann House. Entrance façade with Lappen children around 1952

Fig. 9 Thomas Mann House. Photo of side façade from the time that the Mann family was living there

172 J. R. Davidson

Fig. 12 Thomas Mann House. The library and study of Thomas Mann today, renovated in 2018.

Fig. 13 Thomas Mann House. The kitchen today with its original yellow tiles. Previously, the floor was red terracotta tiles as in the other public areas.

REGIONALISM 173

Fig. 14 Thomas Mann House. Garden view of the house today. The second trellis or pergola above the terrace was added during the renovation.

the tilted wing and closing off the southern terrace, gave privacy to the writer in his office and protected him from noise in the garden.

Upstairs, three bedrooms are lined along the balcony with Katia Mann’s bedroom at the end connected to her husband’s bedroom in the angled wing of the building. These two bedrooms each have their own bathroom, while children and grandchildren share a bath between their three bedrooms. (Figs. 10, 11) Thomas Mann prized his study, and after moving in he described it to his daughter Erika as the most beautiful study he ever had. (Fig. 15) Later, when living in Switzerland, he wrote: “That house was so completely my own. I do

Fig. 15 Thomas Mann House. The client in his

not like this one.”56

study with closed blinds

REGIONALISM 205

Fg. 55 James Vigeveno House #1. Hallway

Fig. 56 James Vigeveno House #1. Entrance.

from the dining porch to the bedrooms with

The house today is slightly altered. The

telephone booth

service porch was enclosed and is now part of a larger kitchen, while the original entrance has disappeared and is part of the balcony.

Fig. 57 James Vigeveno House #1. Garden façade with the screened dining porch

J. R. Davidson, short for Julius Ralph Davidson, was born in Berlin in 1889, left Germany in 1923, and came, via spells in London and Paris, to the USA. Today he is largely known as the architect of Thomas Mann’s house in Pacific Palisades. However, there is a lot more to discover. A contemporary of Richard Neutra, with whom he was often in competition, his architecture is very different. Based in Los Angeles, he designed storefronts, shop interiors, hotels, restaurants, and furniture, noted both for their serenity and their originality. of colors and materials, and a distinct and unique use of indirect lighting and customized lamps. Altogether, Davidson created more than 150 buildings and projects, working in the International Style but also

Esther McCoy

in Mid-Century Modern. In Los Angeles, he designed three houses for the experimental Case Study House Program, each distinguished by its efficient layout.

Typical of his residences—still of timeless elegance—is a dedicated private outdoor space for each resident.

This long overdue publication is a comprehensive documentation of Davidson’s life and work, highlighting J. R.’s contribution to Modernism in California in the 1930s and 1940s. It describes a selection of some 30 buildings and projects in detail, drawing on the historic plans and in particular on images taken by renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman. These pictures are complemented by new photography of the houses that still exist today. In his later years, Thomas Mann said about his residence “Seven Palms” in Pacific Palisades: “The house was so completely my own.”

www.birkhauser.com

J. R. Davidson

J. R. Davidson

a smooth transition from interior to exterior, as well as

For a house, I want to achieve serenity and cheerfulness. Most people value these in a house, but few clients understand the plan features which produce them. Serenity is achieved through an order.

The continuous line is the restful one.

Lilian Pfaff

His interiors are characterized by an interesting choice

J. R. Davidson searched for the ideal floor plan which expanded the life within. His innovations often produced a loose-fitting envelope around a perfect floor plan.

Lilian Pfaff

J. R. Davidson A European Contribution to California Modernism