1945test

1945 (1944) (1946) (1940-1950) Table of Contents

Source

Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1945 See Text

Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1945, 1940s See Text

SM-44 A General View of Santa Monica, California: Showing Yacht Harbor, The Palisades, and the Santa Monica Mountains in the Distance Spencer Air Photos 6A-H2618, Western Publishing & Novelty Co., Los Angeles Calif., 1945, SLL 2005 See Image and Text

L.A. 97-General Douglas MacArthur Park showing Wilshire Boulevard and the Westlake Shopping District Los Angeles, California Post Card Western Publishing and Novelty Co., Los Angeles, Calif., KR, C.T. Art Colortone, Photo by "Dick" Whittington, 18-4215-1 See Image

1067 San Gabriel Mission, Founded in California, 1771 Post Card KR Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif. See Image

834 Joshua Trees on the desert, in California Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif., KR See Image

897 Mount San Jacinto From the Desert, Calif. Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif., KR, See Image

The Smoke Tree in Bloom, near Palm Springs, California, Post Card, 1B-H2597, Willard-Color Photograph by Stephen H. Willard, Palm Springs, California, Natural Color Preproduction from Kodachrome. KR, See Image

Sunset over the Desert, near Palm Springs, Calif. Post Card, 1A-H200, Willard-Photograph by Stephen H. Willard, Palm Springs, California, KR, See Image

Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1945 See Text

Documents

Donald M. Cleland A History of the Santa Monica Schools 1876-1951, Santa Monica Unified School District, February 1952 (Copied for the Santa Monica Library, July 22, 1963). 140 pp., 1945

After two years of study and discussion, the Board of Education, on June 25, 1945, authorized the consolidation of the Junior College, Technical School, and Adult Evening school under the name of Santa Monica City College, with three divisions: the General College, concerned primarily with general education, pre- and semi-professional curricula, engineering, and the fine arts; the Technical Schools, concerned with trade and technical education; and the Adult Education Center, concerned primarily with evening classes. [62. Santa Monica Evening Outlook, July 8, 1950, p. 12G.] At the time of consolidation, Elmer Sandmeyer became president of the City College, with jurisdiction over the three divisions, and Elmer Krehbiel was made director of the division of adult education. [63. Board Minutes, May 16, 1945.] Within the three divisions of the City College, provision is made for all types of classes that will meet the needs and the desires of the adults of the community. How successfully they are doing this is indicated, in part, by the many requests each year for additional classes and the waiting lists that much be established each year in many subjects. But it is recognized that the measure of service an adult education program can render a community is limited only by the support which the community itself gives to that program, thus making it possible continually to widen the scope of work offered. In Santa Monica, this is the purpose for which the adult education program exists.

" . . .

Santa Monica City College

In July of 1945, when all post-high-school education in Santa Monica was administratively consolidated to for a city college, [76. See discussion supra, p. 195.] the junior college became the General Division of the new organization. Its curriculum continued to provide for both college-preparatory and terminal students, and the opportunity to complete the first two years of university work at less expense and while living at home. [77. Bulletin of Information . . ., 1951-52, p. 24.]

The second division of the City College, the Santa Monica Technical School, provides education and training for students wishing immediate placement in employment. The purpose of the Technical Division of the City College is:

"1. To encourage and develop social and economic competence; an appreciation of the dignity and importance of trade and industrial skills; and the ability to do a worth-while job effectively.
"2. To provide educational experience that will help the individual to select, prepare for, enter, and progress in an occupation." [78. Bulletin of Information . . ., 1951-52, p. 71.]

With the increase in industry throughout Santa Monica since World War II, there is an urgent need for the training of students with salable skills.

The Adult Education Division, the third component of the Santa Monica City College, has been discussed in an earlier part of this chapter. [79. Missing. Supra.]

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Joseph Giovannini Oral History of Esther McCoy Archives of American Art, 1987, 1945, 1940s

EM: Just after the war, mainly. Because even after the war there were restrictions on the type of building you could do--the square footage and what materials you could use.

JG: It was very small, wasn't it?

EM: Yes.

JG: The houses . . .

EM: Yes. And that's why in the case-study houses, they were two bedroom houses. But then, too, another reason for this was that the families during the Depression were much smaller. Two was a fairly large family during the Depression. After the war, when small houses were planned . . . You see, even before the Depression, there were not many small houses built. What you did was just to take an old big one and make do with it. Very little work had been done, experimenting with the small house. I think in England they had, and various other places, but not in the United States. So that's why the case-study house program was important-to get good designs for two-bedroom houses. An innovation was that they all had two baths, which was good.

Now, where am I?

JG: About houses. At the time, did the floor plan reflect any change in, sort of the sociology of . . .

EM: Yes, yes, they did. Take Davidson's first case study. It had no halls, and it had the . . .

[END TAPE 5, SIDE 1]

[BEGIN TAPE 5, SIDE 2]


JG: This is Joseph Giovannini interviewing Esther [McCoy] for the Archives of American Art on Saturday, November 14th, in Santa Monica. We're continuing, Esther. We were talking about the floor plan?

EM: Yes. That was a hall-less floor plan, on the Davidson's case study in Brentwood. I'd almost have to show you the floor plan to show you how it worked, but the . . .

JG: What did it reflect about the family? There weren't servants?

EM: Yes. Also, there was a division, another new thing was, between the two bedrooms. There was space. They weren't banked together. Schindler had done that; he did that in the Pressburger house, which was the first one of his that I worked on. I guess that was about '44, and the master bedroom was separated from the children's wing. He may have started that; I don't know. But Wright had really established the open plan. It had come from others before him, but Wright was the one who gave it authority and gave it architectural significance.

JG: That was true of Wright in a lot of things. He was very derivative; there might have been a Leif Ericson who discovered America first but Columbus was the one who made the significant discovery.

EM: Yes. So, what shall I say now.

JG: We were back in about '46 or '47. You were talking about the two-bedroom houses, two bathrooms.
EM: The case-study house program was initiated in 1945. Many people have asked since then why was not Schindler invited to do one. There was a great distinction between the postwar architects and the pre-war architects. Most of the prewar architects were not invited, the ones who were important. First of all, it was a program that was planned to be short-lived, but it was so successful that it went on and on. It was not only the case-study house, there were all sorts of houses that were built as model houses, and they were constantly visited. They were very popular, some on Wilshire Boulevard. One was Neutra's plywood house.

JG: In Brentwood?

EM: Yes, it was moved to Brentwood, but it was first a model house and was moved there. It was bought by John Entenza's father's law partner, whose name was . . . I've forgotten her first name, but her last name was Gramer. She bought it and moved it to the Brentwood location, where it now still is. Any place you'd drive, there would be some model house, flags out, "open to the public," and you could see it. They were mainly ranch houses, or colonials, or salt boxes, anything, but this was the only case studies that were modern. Another thing, too, they had all modern furnishings and modern kitchens, and the landscaping was done by good modern landscape architects.

JG: Was this the only place in the country where this sort of modern case-study house was . . .

EM: Yes, yes it was.

JG: Neutra had been asked by Levitt to study Levittown, but I guess that was a little bit later.

EM: That was later, yes.

JG: That Levitt decided against doing the modern . . .

Can you place a little bit the importance of modernism, the presence of modernism in Southern California and its importance for the modern movement?

EM: Well, it was late coming. It was strong, but it was late, and most of the architects . . . First let me finish why Neutra, why Schindler was not asked and others . . . The case-study house program started as a short-lived thing, and some of John Entenza's friends and Charles Eames's friends from . . . Where did he go to school?

JG: Oh, Cranbrook.

EM: Cranbrook were invited in. Those are the younger, Eero Saarinen, and others. But after this group, the only older ones . . . There were older ones, Davidson and Wurster. And it was, not Honnold & Rex, but, well, Rex was the one of that partnership who designed the house. Most of the houses that were case-studies, after these first six or eight, were ones that were in the works. The architect came to John, and told him, you know, that they had a house, and it looked good, and so then they worked it out to see whether it was going to fit. It usually did.

Some of them were not all that good, the case studies. I wanted to take them out, when I did the book on the case studies, but the editor wanted them all in. That's why, if Ain had had a house, and had gone to John, he would have done it, put it in the case-study house program.
But after a while it was the younger ones, and that was a very important thing. It was why the magazine became so important, because all the post-war architects wanted to be published in it. It was a sign of having arrived to have something in Arts and Architecture.

While I was working for Schindler I did . . . Schindler, like so many of the other older architects, was rather contemptuous of John Entenza. They looked upon him as a Johnny-come-lately. And since John was more oriented to Europe, and Schindler by this time had cut himself off from Europe, he was rather cool to John. And many things, you know, I would take of Schindler's. Call John and ask him to publish things of Schindler's as they were photographed, and Schindler was always critical about the way the stories were handled. They were not too happy with John, the older architects, and they felt he was too much toward Europe and not enough toward Wright and the modern, the native. What is it now I wanted to get back to?

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SM-44 A General View of Santa Monica, California: Showing Yacht Harbor, The Palisades, and the Santa Monica Mountains in the Distance Spencer Air Photos 6A-H2618
Franked with a green 1 cent Washington (Scott #839). Postmarked Santa Monica, Calif., May 21, 12:30 PM, 1945. Addressed to Mr. & Mrs. F.A. Bonenberger/134 Market St./Charlestown, Indiana. "Dearest Mom & Pop,/I guess it will be quite a surprize to you to know I am out in Calif./I just came for a little sight seeing ture. Will write latter."

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General Douglas MacArthur Park is an interesting 20 acre sunken garden park, containing a large lake with boating facilities. Many varieties of tropical trees and flowers surround the lake. Wilshire Boulevard, one of the principal thorougjfares of the Metropolitan area, passes through the park, a direct route to Beverly Hills and the beaches west of Los Angeles.

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1067 San Gabriel Mission, Founded in California, 1771 Post Card KR Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif.

The unique architecture of San Gabriel Mission is shown in its flying buttresses, ouside stairway and in the bell tower with its several arches built to correspond to the different sizes of the bells. For many years until the Pueblo de Los Angeles built a church, the largest bell was rung two hours before the services to give the swettlers ample time to arrive in their oxcarts.

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834 Joshua Trees on the desert, in California Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif., KR

The Joshua Trees, famous for their grotesque shapes, lend much enchantment to the Southern California deserts.

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897 Mount San Jacinto From the Desert, Calif. Post Card, Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif., KR,

Snow-covered peaks, rolling hills and blooming desert make some of the most magnificient of visits to California scenery.

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Last of all the desert trees and flowers to come into bloom, the Smoke Tree is covered with small, deep indigo blossoms through late May and early June.

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Sunset over the Desert, near Palm Springs, Calif. Post Card, 1A-H200, Willard-Photograph by Stephen H. Willard, Palm Springs, California, KR

Franked with the green i cent George Washington Presidential Stamp on September 24, 1945 in Palm Springs and addressed to Capt. and Mrs. L.R. Power, Qtrs. 4 Main Post, Presidio of, San Francisco, Cal., Betsy writes "Hello, dears-I am now stationed at [?] Torney and have literally fallen in love with the place, so9 hurry down and come see us and Palm Springs-Love, Betsy

As the sun sinks in the West, the lonely sentinel Palms are outlined against a many-hued sky known only to the desert regions.

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Jeffrey Stanton Santa Monica Pier A History from 1875 to 1990, Donahue Publishing: Los Angeles, CA, 1990, 1945

Santa Monica Pier on the Skids (1941-1974)

" . . .

"Los Angeles County's Regional Planning Commission had much more ambitious plans for the ocean front along Santa Monica Bay. T.D. Cooke, their division engineer, unveiled plans on July 10, 1945, that called for the elimination of the Santa Monica Breakwater and all the amusement piers along the coast. . . ." p. 102

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