CRAIG ELLWOOD ARCHITECTURE
Esther McCoy, Peter Blake [foreword]
New York: Walker and Company, 1968. First edition. Square quarto. White paper covered boards stamped in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 156 pp. Black and white and color illustrations throughout. Spine crown bumped. Jacket lightly soiled with mild edge wear. Gift inscription to front free endpaper. A very good copy in a very good dust jacket.
9.5 x 9.25 hardcover book with 156 pages well illustrated with black and white and color images of 24 Ellwood buildings -- midcentury modernism in all of its Southern Californian glory. Includes section on the Scientific Data Systems Exhibit and Furniture. Foreword by Peter Blake, essay by Esther McCoy and essay "On Architecture" by Craig Ellwood. The first complete monograph on Ellwood's work, it includes documentation of his two Case Study Houses for John Entenza's "Arts + Architecture" magazine, through his later commercial and residential projects (through 1967), including the Daphne house, the Rosen House and the Scientific Data Systems factory.
Illustrated with finely printed black and white and color photographs by Julius Shulman, Michael Rougier, Marvin Rand, Ovid Neal, Richard Koch, Craig Ellwood, Morley Baer, Herbert Bruce Cross, Jason Hailey, and Kurt Lenk.
Includes well-illustrated studies of the Hale House (Beverly Hills), Case Study House No. 16 (Bel Air), Courtyard Apartments (Hollywood), Smith House (Crestwood Hills, West Los Angeles), Hunt House (Malibu), Case Study House No. 18 (Beverly Hills), South Bay Bank (Manhattan Beach), Westchester Post Office (Westchester), Carson/Roberts Building (Los Angeles), Daphne House (Hillsborough), Rosen House (West Los Angeles), Acme-Arcadia Building (Los Angeles), Office Building (Beverly Hills), Litton Industries (two factories in New Rochelle and Mount Vernon, New York), Chamorro House (Los Angeles), Weekend House (San Luis Obispo), Courtyard House (Beverly Hills), Moore House (Los Angeles), Kubly House (Pasadena), Scientific Data Systems Factory (El Segundo), Craig Ellwood Building (Los Angeles), Scientific Data Systems Administration-Engineering Building (El Segundo), Goldman House (Beverly Hills), Bridge House.
If ever there was a product of Hollywood, it was architect Craig Ellwood (1922 - 1992). A fiction of his own making -- even his name was an invention -- Ellwood fashioned a career through charm, ambition, and a connoisseur's eye. He had no professional license, but was named one of the "three best architects of 1957" along with Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. He drove a red Ferrari with the license plate VROOM. His succession of wives brought him clients and influenced his designs. He relied on a staff of talented assistants to realize his ideas. By the 1950s Ellwood had a thriving practice that infused the Germanic rationalism of Mies van der Rohe with an informal breeziness that was all Southern California. A series of dramatic, open, and elegant houses made him a media star, and interest in him and his work has only increased in recent years.
“California's Design is a marriage between Walden Pond and Douglas Aircraft.” — Esther McCoy
As a contributing editor to Arts & Architecture magazine, Esther McCoy (1904 – 1989) was in a unique position to chronicle the brilliant trajectory of the modern movement in California, particularly the Case Study House program. Her insider status gave her unparalleled access to the key figures in the movement.
From the 1989 New York Times Obituary; “Esther McCoy, an architectural historian and critic . . . was a specialist in West Coast architecture and the author of many books and hundreds of articles in leading architectural publications.
“It was she, almost single-handedly, who awakened serious scholars to the extraordinary richness of California architecture,'' wrote Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New York Times, when a new edition of Ms. McCoy's 1960 work, ''Five California Architects,'' appeared in 1975. Her book, he added, was largely responsible for rescuing the five almost-forgotten architects - Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, R. M. Schindler and Charles and Henry Greene - from obscurity.
“Calling Ms. McCoy ''the pre-eminent writer of California architecture,'' Cesar Pelli, a former dean of the Yale School of Architecture, told The Times in an interview five years ago, ''Our knowledge of Southern California architecture has been primarily formed by her research, her first-hand knowledge and her writing, which is so precise and passionate.''
“She was born in Coffeyville, Kan., and was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. She began her career in New York writing architecture reviews for a number of publishers.
“She worked as a draftsman in the Hollywood office of R. M. Schindler from 1944 to 1947 and began writing about the architects she had come to know. In 1985, she was given the American Institute of Architects' national honor award for excellence.”