UC Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

George Washington Smith began his career as an artist, then a move to Montecito from Paris in 1916 gave him the chance to build his own house. The Andalusian style was instantly popular, and he began a new career as an architect, designing predominantly Spanish Colonial homes and commercial properties in the Santa Barbara area. Along with his associate, Lutah Maria Riggs, they designed many of the most recognizable Spanish Colonial Revival residences in Santa Barbara.

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Gregory Ain was born in Pittsburg and raised in California; he went to school at UCLA and USC. He worked briefly for Rudolf Schindler and then worked for three years for Richard Neutra, in the early 1930s. Ain was one of the leading modernist architects in Southern California during the 1940s and 1950s. He built many single-family homes in the Silverlake and Los Feliz areas of Los Angeles. After World War II, Ain focused on building low-cost housing and multi-family units. He partnered with Joseph Johnson and Alfred Day, as well as landscape architect Garrett Eckbo on many of these ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Myron Hunt & H. G. Chambers, Architects was an architectural firm based in Los Angeles that was started by Myron Hunt with Harold G. Chambers in 1920. The two worked together for 27 years, until 1947, when the firm dissolved. Throughout the lifetime of their firm, Hunt and Chambers designed residential, civic, and commercial buildings. Some of their more notable projects include: the Henry E. Huntington residence in San Marino which is now the Huntington Library, the Flintridge Biltmore Hotel, and the Pasadena Public Library. Myron Hunt, was born in Massachusetts on February 27, 1868. He attended the Massachusetts Institute ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Born near Syracuse, New York, Irving Gill (1870-1936) was descended from Quakers and grew up in a family with ties to the building trades; his father was a carpenter and a farmer. Gill trained in architecture through an apprenticeship with architect Ellis K. Hall in Syracuse and, based on Hall’s recommendation, moved to Chicago in 1890 to work for architect Joseph L. Silsbee. By 1891, however, Gill was in the office of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. Frank Lloyd Wright (who had earlier worked for Silsbee) was working for Sullivan at this time and later claimed that Gill worked under ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Jock Peters, born Jacob Jock Peters, was born on March 16, 1889 in Jarrenwisch, Schleswig Holstein, a region of farmland near the Danish border. At age 14, Peters apprenticed under a stonemason in Hamburg. Three years later, in 1907, Peters attended the Baugewerksschule, a building trade school in Germany. By 1912, Peters was a draftsman in an office in Dusseldorf. In 1913, he worked in the office of K.G. Bensel. From 1913 to 1914 Jock Peters worked in the office of Peter Behrens in Berlin, until he was drafted. In 1920, shortly after Peters was released from duty, he was ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1875, Byers studied to become an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan. He went on to complete one year of graduate work at Harvard University before leaving to work as an electrical engineer for the U.S. Commission at the Paris Exposition, from 1900 to 1901. Byers then left Europe to teach linguistics at the North American Academy in Montevideo, Uruguay. By 1910 Byers was back in the United States, employed by Santa Monica High School, as the head of the Modern Language Department.

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

John Elgin Woolf was trained as an architect at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and moved to Los Angeles in 1936, hoping to get into the movie business. He did not become an actor, but became acquainted with George Cukor, who introduced him to a wide range of celebrity clients for his design and architecture firm. The vast majority of buildings designed by Woolf were private residences, either additions, alterations, or entire houses. Hollywood Regency as an architectural style encompassed some aspects of French Normandie and English Regency styles, but with a decidedly theatrical flair in image-conscious Hollywood. With mansard ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Julius Ralph Davidson was born in 1889 in Berlin. Beginning at the age of 18, J.R. Davidson worked in architectural offices in Berlin, London at the office of Frank Stuart Murray, and Paris. During the years 1919 to 1923, Davidson had his own practice in Berlin before relocating to Los Angeles in 1923, at the age of 34. In Los Angeles, Davidson went to work for the office of David Farquhar, then worked as a set designer under contract with Cecil B. De Mille, and then begun remodeling houses for a firm of builders. In 1927, Davidson opened up his ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

The Thomas Mann house was built in 1941 for the acclaimed writer by architect J.R. Davidson. The Mann's left Germany in the 1930's and settled in the Los Angeles area, with its large expatriate community. The large, 5000 square foot house on over an acre of flat land in the Pacific Palisades area, contained 6 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms at the time of its' construction. Thomas Mann sold the house to Chester Lappen in 1953 and moved to Switzerland. After Lappen died in 2010, the house was a rental, and then placed on the market as a tear-down. The Lappen ...

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum

Architect and designer Karl Emanuel Martin Weber was born in Germany, and apprenticed as a cabinet and furniture maker. He emigrated to the United States, where he eventually established himself in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, and worked for furniture companies and individuals on commissions across the country. Weber's designs for homes, commercial interiors and exteriors, as well as his hotel and retail work, ushered in an era of modern design in the 1920s through the 1940s. His interior designs also encompass his furniture designs, with his most famous being the Airline Chair and Disney Studios in Burbank.

Institution: UC Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design and Architecture Museum