FALL/WINTER 2007

Planning the Huntington House TRADE IN THE PACIFIC • LOST IN AEROSPACE

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens The Huntington Library, Art Collections, FROM THE EDITOR and Botanical Gardens HOMING IN SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON

STEVEN S. KOBLIK President

GEORGE ABDO HE SCAFFOLDING AND CONSTRUCTION Vice President for Advancement trailers are gone, a sign that the renovation of the JAMES P. FOLSOM Huntington Gallery is nearing completion. Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens Curators are busy reinstalling art throughout the KATHY HACKER hTouse, and gardeners have already begun to restore the land - Executive Assistant to the President

SUSAN LAFFERTY scaping surrounding the home Henry and Arabella Huntington Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education commissioned 100 years ago. The building will open to the SUZY MOSER public once again in May 2008. Assistant Vice President for Advancement Curators have been working closely with engineers and JOHN MURDOCH preservationists to execute a plan that acknowledges the com - Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections peting visions of the Huntingtons and the architectural team of ROBERT C. RITCHIE Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey. Historian Sam Watters adds W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research and Education another layer to the story by comparing Hunt and Grey’s early

LAURIE SOWD plans to those of Edward S. Cobb, the first architect Associate Vice President for Operations Huntington hired for the job (page 8).

ALISON D. SOWDEN Early renderings and photos of the south facade show the Vice President for Financial Affairs house high on a hill overlooking a ranch that was gradually SUSAN TURNER-LOWE giving way to specialized botanical gardens. Forty years later, Vice President for Communications a different kind of ranch house appeared on the landscape of DAVID S. ZEIDBERG Southern California. Sunset editor Daniel P. Gregory explores Avery Director of the Library the allure of Maynard L. Parker’s photos for magazine readers

MAGAZINE STAFF eager to see—if not move into—the postwar ranch houses designed by Cliff May (page 2). Editor MATT STEVENS Writer D. J. Waldie grew up in Lakewood, where 17,500 homes went up Designer in a mere 33 months. More than 70,000 people moved in by 1955, populating LORI ANN VANDER PLUYM the workforce of Douglas Aircraft and other Southern California companies occupying the home front of the Cold War. Waldie still resides in the modest Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by home he grew up in, a longevity that helps him ponder the impact of the rise, the Office of Communications. It strives to connect read ers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of fall, and rise of the aerospace industry on the lives and families of its workers The Huntington, capturing in news and features the (page 5). work of researchers, educators, curators, and others across a range of disciplines. All this construction—50 and 100 years in the making—is a reminder that

This magazine is supported in part by the history in California is relatively new, if not fleeting. However, historian David Annenberg Foundation. Igler takes us back more than 400 years to a period before the arrival of INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: British settlers in North America (page 17). Thousands of miles to the west of Matt Stevens, Editor Huntington Frontiers Jamestown, an international cast of characters was already making contact with 1151 Oxford Road Indians along the Pacific Coast. History is not so new, after all, and it’s in our San Marino, CA 91108 [email protected] own backyard.

Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided by the Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. MATT STEVENS Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. City of Industry, Calif. Opposite page, upper left: The south facade of the Huntington house, ca. 1911. Right: Maynard L. Parker © 2007 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and (1900–1976), photograph of Cliff May’s Pace Setter house, ca.1948. Parker collection . Lower left: Abraham Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without Ortelius (1527–1598), map of the Pacific (detail), ca. 1595. per mission of the publisher is prohibited. [ VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 ]

Contents FALL/WINTER 2007

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD 8 Planning the Huntington House By Sam Watters

TRADING PLACES 17 Jamestown—and the Pacific—at 400 By David Igler

8

2

DEPARTMENTS

ACCESSIONS: Photographing ranch houses By Daniel P. Gregory 2

ON REFLECTION: Lost in aerospace By D. J. Waldie 5

CURATOR’S NOTEBOOK: Building plant collections 17 By Dylan P. Hannon 22 IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1 [ ACCESSIONS ]

View with a Room

MAYNARD L. PARKER PICTURES THE RANCH HOUSE

by Daniel P. Gregory

HE AMERICAN PUBLIC FIRST GLIMPSED the romance, practicality, innovation, and easy indoor-outdoor flow of Cliff May’s ranch house designs through Maynard L. Parker’s glossy, eTvocative, and highly informative photographs of May’s own house at Riviera Ranch in Brentwood, Calif. Finished in 1939, this was the third house that May built for his family, and it launched the most successful stage in his career. Parker (1900–1976) is most identified with the designs of May (1908 –1989), who is widely acknowledged to be the father of the suburban ranch house. An accomplished Los Angeles–based photographer, Parker specialized in shooting contemporary houses and gardens for such magazines as Architectural Digest, Home (an early title for the Los Angeles Times Magazine ), House Beautiful , and Sunset . Like his better - known contemporaries Julius Shulman and Marvin Rand—

It’s easy to see why Maynard Parker and Cliff May made such an effective team.

whose recent photo books have fanned public interest in Southern California’s midcentury modernism—Parker recorded the work of architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra. He also shot the gardens of San Francisco’s most famous midcentury-modern landscape architect, Thomas Church. It’s easy to see why Parker and May made such an effec - tive team. May’s houses were novel in the way they com - bined history with modernity, and Parker captured that duality perfectly, as these three images demonstrate. They’re stylish. The furniture is carefully edited and arranged. The photos are also technically proficient, with lighting artfully

Picture window wall. Modern walls of glass open whole sections of May’s house to the patio. Parker uses the sleekest expanse of glass as an elegant frame or even a sort of movie screen to heighten the view of the living room, while making us aware that it’s visually connected to the patio.

2 Fall /Winter 2007 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 balanced. At the same time they celebrate and idealize a way of life in which house and garden are interchangeable. Magazines like Sunset , which brought May to a regional audience, and House Beautiful , which introduced May to the nation at large, published them enthusiastically during the 1940s and 1950s. Superb promotional tools, Parker’s photographs fed the enormous pent-up demand— following World War II—for new house-building ideas. In 1995 The Huntington acquired the images shown here and approximately 65,000 others (mostly negatives and transparencies), the photographer’s entire lifework. A recent grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow The Huntington to make the archive accessible to scholars and the public in 2009.

Daniel P. Gregory is a senior editor for the Home section of Sunset magazine. He holds a doctorate in architectural history from the University of California, Berkeley. His book Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House will be published by Rizzoli in spring 2008. The book relies extensively on photographs from The Huntington’s collection.

Above: California living is exemplified in a view of May’s Pace Setter house of 1948, which was sponsored by House Beautiful and also built at Riviera Ranch. Right: New appliances like a freezer show state-of-the-art modernity and May himself dispensing, not just ice cream, but also the latest design ideas. May always used his own home as a demonstration house where he could experiment with new concepts and gadgets and show them off to prospective clients.

4 Fall /Winter 2007 [ ON REFLECTION ]

Lost in Aerospace

INHABITING A FUTURE LONG SINCE PAST by D. J. Waldie

COME FROM LAKEWOOD— a place that was At the inception of the Aerospace Age—in the midst of made to fabricate the future—but it’s a future now World War II, in fact—the image of the new workforce that past. This is not to say that my aerospace suburb has would build the future was being fabricated in Southern no future. Only that it’s not the future for which California. That image was Chester A. Riley, the earnest LIakewood was made in 1950. My suburb sold itself into and hapless hero of The Life of Riley , a long-running series existence as “The City of Tomorrow, Today” at the begin - that began on a radio program hosted by Groucho Marx, ning—or one beginning—of a new age in Los Angeles. Lakewood has seen the end of that age, or one of its ends, Assembling the Army Air Corps BT-15 trainer at the new Vultee Aircraft Corp. in the waning of the aerospace industry. plant in Downey meant more than building planes in 1941. The Age of Aerospace in Southern California also fabricated the men and women who What will be the meaning of that optimistic and terri - built them and the places—Downey, Lakewood, Torrance, and Lynwood fying age of rockets, atom bombs, and supersonic flight? among them—they called home. “Dick” Whittington Studio, photographer. What lingering impression did the Age of Aerospace make on our imaginations and on our landscape? In Lakewood, aerospace gave us a precarious everyday life, and periodically aerospace took it away.

The assembly buildings where the future had been fabricated—in the form of Douglas airliners—stood not far from where I live. Most of those buildings are gone now. The rest will follow in three or four years when production of the Boeing C-17 military transport ceases. The construc - tion of 1,400 residential units has already begun on the former Douglas site; more will follow. Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach had employed 50,000 workers during World War II and more than 100,000 at the height of the Cold War, making it one of the largest man - ufacturing facilities in the nation’s history. Through the 1960s to the end of the Vietnam War, aerospace manufac - turing in Los Angeles County employed about 500,000 workers—or 43 percent of the county’s industrial work - force. Today, in all of Los Angeles County, only 38,000 workers are employed in aerospace manufacturing; perhaps 70,000 more work in related industries in the region.

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 5 [ ON REFLECTION ]

spawned a popular motion picture in 1949, and became one I watched The Life of Riley on Friday nights, when I was of television’s most successful situation comedies between a boy, on a big, black-and-white RCA TV set in the side 1953 and 1958. room of my Lakewood home. I watched the Disneyland William Bendix was cast as Riley, a riveter at a California series on Wednesday nights. In 1955, Disney’s “Man in aircraft plant. His exclamation of impotent indignation— Space” and “Man and the Moon” episodes, and later “Mars “What a revoltin’ development this is!”—became one of and Beyond,” presented cartoon images of the multistage the best-known catchphrases of the period. The early radio rockets that would, thanks to armies of scientists and tech- segments were called, with the blackest of Groucho Marxist nicians, take boys like me to the moon and then to colonies irony, “The Flotsam Family.” Essentially a big-hearted lug, on Mars. Chester Riley was defense industry flotsam, already adrift When a real rocket scientist appeared among the cartoon in the first days of the Age of Aerospace along with his figures, he was a smiling, earnest man, a little like Chester nuclear family in a landscape of small houses on small lots Riley in body type, with an accent, too, a German accent: that was meant to be Hawthorne or Lawndale or Torrance. Wernher von Braun. Von Braun, in his various roles as an Riley was the prototype for later blue-collar protago - affable seller of space flight, as a thoughtful counselor to nists like Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone, and Archie presidents, and as the master rocketeer, appeared utterly Bunker. Today, with even more irony, Riley’s successor as unlike the “Aviation Okies” whom I knew, except in the model technology worker is yellow, two-dimensional one way: von Braun’s adoption of a protective, born-again Homer Simpson, who works at a nuclear power plant. southern-ness when he had found a home, far from A lot of my neighbors worked at the big Douglas plant Peenemünde, Germany, in Huntsville, Ala. on Lakewood’s southern edge. In the unlikely event any of Perhaps that was a further example of space-age fabri - them thought they were representative of some “greatest cation. Later, I learned that the Rileys weren’t the only generation,” they had only to look to Riley to see what “flotsam family” adrift in the immediate postwar world. much of America thought. But Chester lacked one defin - Von Braun’s family of engineers and technicians who had ing characteristic of my neighbors. William Bendix was a designed and built the V-2 rockets that fell on London, wonderful character actor, but when he opened his mouth, Amsterdam, and Antwerp had been cast adrift as well. it was Brooklyn that spoke. Riley, to be true to life, should have spoken with the drawls and twangs of Oklahoma, west What lingering impression did Texas, and Missouri. By 1945, an estimated 600,000 Southerners had moved here to work in aircraft factories—many of them were like the Age of Aerospace make on Steinbeck’s Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath , complet - ing a migration from the Dust Bowl to the suburbs by way our imaginations and on our of the orchards of the Central Valley and the oil camps of Bakersfield. Wartime columnist Ernie Pyle called them landscape? “Aviation Okies.” Well below the level of guys with slide rules, among the The von Braun family included men like Dieter Huzel lugs in khaki with maybe a high school education, these and fellow engineer Bernhard Tessmann. They had success - “Aviation Okies” gave Los Angeles aerospace a distinctive, fully stashed 14 tons of plans, reports, and rocket parts in a southern-inflected culture with its own style of country- disused iron mine in Germany’s Harz Mountains while von western music, its own language, food preferences, and Braun zigzagged through the collapsing Reich. The plans gathering places, as well as its own politics, class resent - were stashed in early April 1945. On May 2, the von Braun ments, and racial antagonisms. rocket team finally made contact with elements of the U.S. I grew up among “Aviation Okies” and their sons and 44th Division. By February 1946, von Braun and the V-2 daughters and saw them whipsawed by cycles of boom engineers reached the United States as part of Operation and bust in defense contracts and aircraft orders. I listened Paperclip. By January 1947, Huzel was working at Fort to their complaints about Douglas—an organization that Bliss, Texas, and a little later at North American Aviation, seemed to be composed of dense layers of managers with providing a key link in the transfer of German rocket a disturbing inability to manage the future. In Lakewood, engine technology to what would become Rocketdyne. aerospace gave us a precarious everyday life, and periodi - Huzel was another image of the model aerospace worker, cally aerospace took it away. a competent, disciplined man just like the heroes of what

6 Fall /Winter 2007 In 1959, Lakewood received a novel piece of playground equipment—a Douglas F3D Skynight fighter—for a space-age themed park that also featured climb - ing structures in the form of a rocket and a flying saucer. The jet was so popular, one resident recalled, that “you had to fight for the cockpit. In other city parks, there was nothing like it. It was very much a flight of fancy.” City of Lakewood historical collection .

was called “hard” science fiction, men to make a perilous or cajole them, and offer them no greater image of the future inhabitable. It was less of a future, it now seems, for future. And some men reinvented themselves, but that good-hearted lugs like Riley or the white- shirted middle proved more elusive than they had imagined. managers of Douglas, and more of a future for the mem - One critic has named the Cold War the “supreme fic - bers of the German Rocket Team. tion” of its age. The Cold War made both Riley and Huzel; When I met him in 1976, Dieter Huzel certainly didn’t it fabricated my neighbors and the guys in white shirts and look like the astronauts who had gotten us to the moon, narrow ties at Douglas who managed them. It served none although he had helped to get them there. He didn’t look of them as well as they had hoped it would. But it did make, like a hero of the Cold War, but his work would help deliv - and still makes in a diminished form, the places in which er multiple 20-megaton warheads to targets in the Soviet most Californians live today. Union. He didn’t look like one of Hitler’s former hench - As Joan Didion bleakly put it in her memoir Where I men, either. Was From , the Age of Aerospace had, she claimed, created During the war, Ernie Pyle wrote admiringly, but with an “artificial ownership class” of Californians whose pos - a flinty realism, about the “little routine men” of America session of places like Lakewood was unreal, unearned, and who were fighting the war and winning it for a future they just another fiction of the Cold War. thought would belong to them. They thought that the Will that sorrow be our only memory of the Age of anonymous work of dutiful men like themselves would Aerospace?
add up to a postwar victory visible to everyone on some faraway frontier, like raising the flag on Iwo Jima’s Mount D. J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir Suribachi, in effect, harnessing Ernie Pyle’s “little routine and Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles . This men” to a rocket. article is adapted from a paper he presented at a conference titled Embedded in Los Angeles’ aerospace culture are these “Rocket Science and Region: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the contradictory images of men’s work and their usefulness. Aerospace Industry in Southern California.” The conference, held Over at Douglas, some “routine men” riveted together in August, was sponsored by the Huntington-USC Institute on large parts of a “tomorrow” that has passed. And other men California and the West. in white shirts and narrow ties managed only to threaten

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 7 BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD Planning the Huntington House | by Sam Watters

8 Fall /Winter 2007 n the fall of 1908, Los Angeles residents witnessed an astonishing sight. On the south-facing ridge of a vast ranch in the San Gabriel Valley, a majestic villa, larger than any house in the city, began to rise against the gray-pink San Gabriel Mountains. Its sunlit interiors would overlook a landscape of orange groves, oaks, and palm trees that exemplified, on the grandest scale, California’s fame as America’s Eden. Designed for railway and real estate mag - nate Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) by Pasadena architects Myron Hunt and IElmer Grey, the house was dubbed “Huntington’s Palace.”

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 9 Mr. Huntington’s decision to create and business colleagues on both coasts an estate outside of downtown Los were developing estates modeled on Angeles places him well in his time. the country house properties of English The turn of the century was a period aristocrats. Architecture journals, port - of prodigious suburban house build - fo lios, and the popular magazine Country ing by wealthy Americans escaping the Life in America , read by Huntington increased congestion of established city and shared with his superintendent, neighborhoods. Huntington’s railroad William Hertrich (1880–1966), profiled

Previous page: Elmer Grey’s preliminary rendering of the south facade, 1908. The watercolor, more than six feet wide, was exhibited at the convention of the Architectural League of the Pacific Coast, held in Portland and San Francisco in 1909, and Los Angeles in October 1910. Below: South facade with Huntington Drive and Pacific Electric Railway track in foreground, ca. 1911. Right: Edward S. Cobb’s rendering of the south facade, June 1905.

10 Fall /Winter 2007 all aspects of house planning and garden improvement. Articles were illustrated living downtown, purchasing in 1902 with photographs of hilltop manors the Los Angeles estate of 19th-century surrounded by gently sloping lawns horticulturist Ozro W. Childs. The Empire house with a deep-sloping and established trees. Swing seats and property at Main and Eleventh streets mansard roof, before deciding to raze rattan chairs on wide side porches was unique for its nine acres of land - the building and construct a new house overlooked fields cultivated by tenant scaped gardens. The continued rise of on its site. Not yet acquainted with farmers. Railroad lines and the auto - real estate prices and his subsequent Myron Hunt, he turned to a trusted mobile allowed the rich to commute interest in a larger property likely guid - railway employee to draw up plans. to downtown offices and return at day’s ed Huntington’s ultimate decision to As a commercial and civil engi - end to the quiet luxury of country life. retain the downtown estate as an invest - neer, Edward S. Cobb (1858–1937) Huntington himself was no exception ment and not as a residence. was an unlikely candidate for a resi - to this practice, as he traveled from San In January 1903, Huntington dential commission. He was educated Marino to the city by private rail car acquired the 500-acre San Marino at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute or chauffeured limousine along Hunt- ranch of James de Barth Shorb. By in Massachusetts and developed his ington Drive, which he built in 1903 1905 he had transplanted garden- architectural skills through apprentice - at the southern boundary of his ranch. specimen flowering trees and shrubs ship. He worked in Boston, Dallas, and Huntington had spent eight years from the Childs place to the new San Francisco as a mechanical and searching and planning for a Southern property. He studied the plans of the hydraulic engineer before moving to California home. At first he considered Shorb residence, a clapboard, Second Los Angeles in 1901. Here he worked for Huntington’s Pacific Electric Railway, designing depots and service Not yet acquainted with Myron Hunt, Huntington buildings, and was the engineer of the Los Angeles landmark funicular rail - turned to a trusted railway employee to draw up plans. way at Third Street, Angels Flight.

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 11 Cobb’s first- (right) and second- floor plans (below), June 12, 1905, along with Huntington’s own rendering of the second floor, date unknown. A comparison of Cobb’s first floor plan and Hunt

and Grey’s final design establishes that the

Pasadena architects were constrained by the

engineer’s earlier work.

helped found and where he kept a By late 1907 Huntington had turned suite of rooms. Huntington stayed at to Myron Hunt (1868–1952) and Elmer the club while on business from his Grey (1872–1963) to begin a new set of New York office. plans. Why he discontinued working Cobb completed the railway build - with Cobb is not known, but Hunt- ing in March 1905. In June of that year ington likely came to understand the he presented Huntington with draw - need for experienced architects to ings for a three-story manor in the develop and oversee a sophisticated Georgian Revival style derived from house project. Hunt and Grey were a American and English 18th-century logical choice, given that they had sources. The style had been embraced designed the financier’s 1906 Rancho after the 1876 Centennial Exposition Revival hacienda at his development in Philadelphia awakened an interest Clifton-by-the-Sea (today Redondo in America’s colonial history. Surviving Beach), and houses in Pasadena’s Oak drawings by Cobb incorporate ubiq - Knoll area for his son and one of his uitous elements of Georgian Revival daughters. houses—a two-story, columned en- Huntington shared with the archi - trance portico with a broad pediment, tects Cobb’s plans and his own sketch - classical window details, and an extend - es. Myron Hunt recalled in 1930 that ed side porch. Cobb’s work had been drawn from Pattern books and magazine photo Huntington’s own ideas and “looked essays were likely sources for Cobb’s like a hotel plan.” This criticism aptly Georgian design. A rendering of his applied to the engineer’s design of a plan’s south facade calls to mind the central hallway leading to a double stair - White House, much publicized after case, a configuration found in down - being renovated in 1902 by the Class- town Los Angeles establishments, ical Revival architects McKim, Mead, including the Jonathan Club housed and White. It is not surprising that in the Pacific Electric Railway building. Huntington, who institutionalized the Hunt and Grey spent the winter and canon of western Anglo-American spring of 1908 developing their plans. culture in Los Angeles with his library In New York, Hunt consulted with and art collections, considered building their client, divorced in 1906, and the a house that would have brought west woman he was courting, the widow of Huntington became well acquaint - the architecture of America’s founders. his uncle Collis, Arabella Duval ed with Cobb when the engineer over - Meticulous and concise, Hunting- Huntington (1850–1924). A Franco- saw construction, begun in 1903, of the ton managed the details of his estate’s phile with a connoisseur’s appreciation Pacific Electric Railway headquarters development. A pencil sketch in his of French 18th-century design, she at Sixth and Main streets. In this build - own hand reveals that Huntington guided the interior decoration of the ing Huntington efficiently located both envisioned a 16,000-square-foot resi - house and the building’s dimensions. his offices and the Jonathan Club, a dence with rooms consistent in size In a rare moment of candor years later, private men’s organization that he with contemporary estate houses. Huntington’s valet, Alphonzo Gomez,

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 13 recounted Arabella’s role: “There was their visit was the 1906 Montecito as it emerged as an international power. so much fighting between Mr. and Mrs. residence of James Waldron Gillespie, The style called for an eclectic synthesis about the size of the rooms…she want - called El Fureidis, meaning “Little of Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque ed to live in a big place…she was the Paradise” in Arabic. Designed by east - elements in houses that were monu - one who pretty near designed the erner Bertram G. Goodhue with Hunt mental and formal. The methodology house with the architect…because she and Grey as supervising architects, the for creating these buildings was taught was afraid that Mr. Huntington would 10,000-square-foot estate house, like at American universities and at the make a small place of it.” Arabella pre - the one Huntington would build in San École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Turn- vailed, though the interior decoration Marino, was a symmetrical Mediterran- of-the-century architecture critics of Hunt and Grey’s 35,000-square- ean villa with a terra-cotta roof and observed that Beaux-Arts interpreta - foot house combined elements of both white stucco walls. Its extensive gardens tions of white Italian Renaissance villas her and Mr. Huntington’s French and included a stairway that stepped down with shaded loggias and tile roofs were English tastes. By building a palace from the house to a terraced hillside. particularly appropriate to California commensurate in size with the houses Hunt and Grey persuaded Hunting- because of the state’s temperate climate of the very rich, Arabella and Henry ton to abandon Cobb’s design based and Mediterranean heritage. Huntington identified themselves with on colonial traditions and to pursue Though Hunt and Grey determined America’s social elite. plans derived from European classical the overall approach to Huntington’s To guide his client’s decisions, architecture. The Beaux-Arts style house plans, the financier held firm Myron Hunt accompanied Huntington they adopted had been introduced at on the position of rooms and finishes. in May 1908 on a day-long tour of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian In February 1908, he wrote the archi - Santa Barbara estates. The highlight of Exposition and embraced by America tects after a meeting with Myron Hunt Left: An interim blueprint of the first floor by Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, ca. July 1908, shows an early proposal for the east porch. Pencil corrections suggest its final design and changes to the interior staircase. Above: The porch, ca. 1918, furnished by the Huntingtons as an outdoor conservatory with palms, swing seats, and imported wicker.

in New York: “The style of architec - struggled to finesse the transition be- cate of Hunt and Grey’s work, wrote ture proposed when your Mr. Hunt tween the house and the prominent that California country houses should was here, I think will be satisfactory. columned porch. Huntington insisted be “long in proportion to their There should be an entrance way and that the 1905 dimensions (40 by 60 height…because the live oaks in the long hall and a stairway to the court in feet) of the outdoor room be retained, vicinity are not big enough in scale to the rear, and be sure to have plenty of with no change in width from the provide a proper background for a light in the hall. I want all the rooms east wall of the house to the porch’s tallish building.” Croly urged that the white with the exception of the outer edge. Italian tradition of light exterior walls, Library which I shall probably have in The simplicity of the engaged col- white or gray, and brightly colored mahogany.” A comparison of Cobb’s umns, carved stone details, and win - roofs looked best in the California first floor plan and Hunt and Grey’s dows of the finished exterior showed light and provided the contrast needed final design establishes that the Pasadena the influence of John Russell Pope to define a building that is “both con - architects were constrained by the (1873 –1937), a master of country spicuous and…surrounded by trees.” engineer’s earlier work. Though they estate architecture and later the archi - Perhaps influenced by these ideas, Hunt clarified Cobb’s room arrangement tect of the Huntington mausoleum in and Grey finished the roof of Hunt- with a strong east-west hallway axis, San Marino.The house’s defining, low ington’s house with terra-cotta tiles the first-floor spaces remained as orig - horizontal profile with a recessed, and plastered the unornamented walls inally configured. A large library dom - third-story servants’ quarters reflected in white stucco. inated the southeast corner, and a din - Arabella’s French sensibility and the Beaux-Arts architecture programs ing room and service wing remained architects’ keen awareness of contem - like that at the Massachusetts Institute on the west side. Surviving interim porary architectural thought. In 1906, of Technology, where Myron Hunt drawings establish that the architects the critic Herbert D. Croly, an advo - studied, stressed a unified approach to

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 15 Hand-tinted photograph of the south facade, ca. 1928.

house and landscape architecture. Hunt the north entrance, they conceived a The evolution of Huntington’s and Grey evolved a garden design that two-level “patio” with a center foun - house from a Georgian manor to further associated the residence with tain. Huntington himself described Mediterranean-inspired villa paral - the southern Mediterranean. As seen their plan as an “Italian” garden. Hunt leled Los Angeles’ emerging identity in a watercolor by Elmer Grey (see and Grey’s ideas were not realized, and as a modern American city with a pages 8 and 9), the architects proposed instead the American tradition of lawns southern European past. Today the a double stairway on the hillside and specimen trees guided the early house remains an enduring symbol of below the south-facing terrace. For development of the residential grounds. Huntington’s prominence in Los Since his divorce, Huntington had Angeles history and a reflection of Huntington to abandon led a peripatetic, businessman’s life, privileged life in America at the close crisscrossing the continent by railway, of the Gilded Age.
staying in men’s clubs and relatives’ Cobb’s design based houses. After marrying Arabella in Sam Watters is the author of Houses of 1913, he wrote that at last he had a Los Angeles, 1885–1935 , in two volumes, on colonial traditions “home” and that his wife wished him recently published by Acanthus Press, New “the best of everything which is some - York.Volume 1 treats the Huntington house. and to pursue plans thing so entirely new to me.” By the time Henry and his new wife arrived derived from European for their first stay together in San Marino in January 1914, his collabo - classical architecture. ration with architects and Arabella had yielded the best in American res - idential design.

16 Fall /Winter 2007 THE VIEW OF COLONIAL AMERICAN HISTORY FROM THE PACIFIC By David Igler

istorical anniversaries are memory. For instance, Christopher lic well versed in disease epidemics, highly significant events, but Columbus’ 1492 “discovery” received enslavement, and catastrophic popula - Honly rarely for the reasons great fanfare at the 400-year mark in tion declines among Native Americans. reported by the media.While purport - 1892, but flash-forward to 1992, and During this past year, Jamestown’s edly about the past, commemorations we witnessed a far more controversial quadricentennial—dubbed “America’s actually tell us far more about present- “celebration.” Frankly, Columbus did 400th Anniversary!”—has saturated day culture, politics, and historical not sell well to a late-20th-century pub - U.S. media, and to a lesser extent,

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 17 British news outlets as well. Museums across the nation, from the Smith- sationalism, a significant sonian Institution to the Huntington question did make its way to Library, have exhibited artifacts and the fore: To what extent does James- documents to a highly interested town actually represent our nation’s public. Visitors to Virginia toured the colonial past? Jamestown, in the broad - recently discovered and excavated site est of terms, represents a “first en- of Jamestown, President George W. counter” that led to sustained British Bush waxed semi-eloquently about a settlement on the eastern edge of “Tidewater settlement that laid the North America. The new colony also foundation of our great democracy,” provided a small toehold—and a very national origins, its western sea- and Queen Elizabeth II accepted some unstable one at that—for England’s board, and that other oceanic world, credit for her country’s contribution to trans-Atlantic ventures in the 1600s. the Pacific. the origins of our nation. Historians of In this way, Jamestown formed an ini - One approach is the study of colonial America, meanwhile, found tial building block for the creation of California, both its indigenous histo - ry before “contact” and its colonial incarnation as Alta California (the The Pacific functioned much like the Atlantic northernmost province of New Spain, Ocean did in facilitating the circulation of people, and later, Mexico). We now under - stand that Alta California was not commercial goods, and ideas. only a Spanish and Mexican province, but also a site of burgeoning inter- themselves on the nightly news as nar - what colonial historians now call the national commerce on the eastern edge rators of the current drama as well as “Atlantic World.” But as first encoun - of the Pacific Ocean. As such, it offers the 400-year-old story of Jamestown’s ters go, such a permanent settlement an important, fresh perspective on our settlement: “Tell us, Professor X, did was rare; more typical were encoun - nation’s colonial and more recent past. the original Jamestown settlers really ters involving trade or rudimentary In other words, Jamestown is but engage in cannibalism and other acts diplomacy. The British Atlantic World one scene in a multifaceted play about of barbarism?” (Yes, most historians is at best only one way of represent - the nation’s beginnings. While trans- responded, far more than we could ing our colonial past. The time has Atlantic exploration led to settlement ever imagine.) come for our nation to recognize— along America’s East Coast, equally If coverage of the 400-year anniver - and possibly even celebrate—multiple significant activities were beginning sary often bordered on historical sen- versions of our colonial past: its inter - to play out 3,000 miles to the west.

18 Fall /Winter 2007 Page 17: This map of the Pacific (detail, ca. 1595), by Antwerp- born Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), represented the most advanced printed cartographic information about the west coast of North America known at the time of Jamestown’s founding. Above: The coast of California and Mexico from the Portolan atlas (detail, ca. 1570), produced by Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado (1520–ca. 1580?) around the time of Pedro de Unamuno’s landing at Morro Bay. Mexico City is identified prominently at the lower right. Ortelius and Vaz Dourado show a coastline that slopes westward Trade rather than northward.

HUNTINGTON Trade vessels in early California, for Along coastal North America, trade Alaska—was also “international before instance, tell us a lot about the types vessels trafficked up and down the it became national.” of connections forged between this future U.S. territories from San Diego The Pacific functioned much like colony and the surrounding world. to Sitka, Alaska. “The new account of the Atlantic Ocean did in facilitating Decades before the 1849 Gold Rush American history in the 16th and the circulation of people, commercial and California statehood the follow - 17th centuries,” historian Karen goods, and ideas. And yet, in looking ing year, commercial ships from at Kupperman recently wrote, “demon - at seminal events, America seems to least 22 different nations or compa - strates that America was international focus almost entirely on all things east- nies appeared on the coastline. Thus, before it became national.” Kupperman ern. If we fail to consider the Pacific’s many people from around the globe set her stance firmly on the Atlantic influence on our nation’s past, we risk were well aware of California’s oppor - Coast, and yet we find a remarkably isolating today’s Asian Americans from tunities before “the world rushed in” similar set of interactions among their 150-year trans-Pacific heritage. in the mid-1800s. A similar inter- nations and peoples along America’s Or try to imagine the American classic national convergence transpired else - Pacific Coast. The American West— Moby-Dick without, as Melville wrote, where in the Pacific Ocean, from specifically California and the North- “this mysterious, divine Pacific [that] Peru to Hawaii to mainland China. west Coast, as well as Hawaii and zones the world’s bulk about.” It would

Commercial vessels were a common sight prior to the Gold Rush, not just off the California coast but throughout the Pacific. The Pacific Steam Navigation Co. ran mail and goods from Valparaíso, Chile, to Panama and was the first such company to use steam-powered vessels. This print commemorates the maiden voyage of the steam vessel Peru , leaving Valparaiso in 1840. Kemble collection .

20 Fall /Winter 2007 be a dry story, indeed. More broadly, galleons under his temporary com - and drove off European colonizers. think about when the United States mand. Unamuno had goods—quite Europeans were viewed as temporary emerged as a truly global economic likely contraband—for Mexico’s mar - guests at best, hostile invaders at player. One could argue it happened in kets, and the Nuestra Señora appeared worst; disease played a far stronger the Pacific Ocean: By 1820 more vessels seaworthy enough for a Pacific cross - role in conquest and settlement than from America than from any other ing. Such a homespun private venture did superior military power. Second, maritime nation crisscrossed the Pacific makes it delightfully representative of it enriches our understanding that a for purposes of trade, thereby linking our colonial past, as does the diverse diverse and international cast of sea - the U.S. economy with the Atlantic, crew of Spaniards, Portuguese, Luzon farers made landfall in the Americas Indian, and Pacific ocean markets. indios from the Philippines, and a during the colonial period.The British, In fact, almost 500 U.S. ships traded Japanese cabin boy. as significant as they were to our nation - along the California coastline before the On Oct. 17, 1587, Unamuno sight - al origins, comprised only one such Gold Rush. Some California-bound ed a bay (presumed by most scholars to group. Third, voyages for the purpose vessels are fairly well known because be Morro Bay) on the coast of upper of trade, rather than permanent settle - ment, were far more typical of early American encounters between Euro- Almost 500 U.S. ships traded along the California peans and Native Americans. Finally, the Atlantic Ocean and the North coastline before the Gold Rush. American eastern seaboard was only one site of contact, conquest, and set - they appeared in bestselling voyage California, and the next day he noted tlement.The other ocean—the Pacific— narratives, such as the Pilgrim and Alert , “the smoke of many fires” just inland provided a second, highly significant, featured in Richard Henry Dana’s Two from the bay. The events that followed avenue to the Americas and the future Years Before the Mast (1840). Others are during the next two days could form United States. rather obscure, like the Spanish brig a stand-in for almost any “discovery” Alas, the 420th anniversary of the Activo , which for almost two decades and “contact” by Europeans in the Nuestra Señora ’s visit to Morro Bay is shuttled supplies and soldiers from the Americas. Unamuno ordered a small unlikely to catch on to the extent of Mexican mainland to the struggling party to “look about to see if there Jamestown’s 400th celebration. How- Alta California missions. None of these were any settlements or other signs of ever, by the time Jamestown’s 500th vessels has the same celebrity status as inhabitants, and to see if there were anniversary rolls around, I’m willing the Godspeed , which crossed the Atlantic any minerals in the [area].” Finding to wager that American society will in 1607 bound for Jamestown, but neither the Indians who built the fires recognize and celebrate a much broad - ships headed for California nevertheless nor the hoped-for gold or silver de- er range of early encounters and colo - provide us with a broader understand - posits, Unamuno described the next nial origins.
ing of early colonial encounters—far order of business: he “quietly and beyond British schemes for settlement. pacifically” took possession of the land David Igler is associate professor of history Take, for instance, the Spanish fri- in the name of his king, Philip II.That at the University of California, Irvine. He gate Nuestra Señora de Buena Esperanza , “pacific” conquest lasted less than two is organizing a conference titled “Pacific which crossed the Pacific Ocean from days. Chumash Indians attacked two Passages: Reconnecting East, West, and Macao and entered California waters different landing parties on Oct. 20, Center in the Pacific Basin.” It will take in October 1587. (By my count, that and these “skirmishes” encouraged place atThe Huntington April 4-5, 2008. allows us a 420-year anniversary this Unamuno to hold council aboard ship, year.)The Nuestra Señora did not trans - where they “resolved that it was advis- port settlers for a new North American able to continue on our voyage…and colony, but that fact alone makes it not go ashore to the enemy.” The ves - more representative of “first encoun - sel sailed south without further ado. ters” and America’s colonial past. The This incident is an exquisite exam - Spaniard Pedro de Unamuno purchased ple of America during the earliest days this ship in Macao after Spanish author - of colonialism. First, it shows that ities repossessed the two Manila Native Americans frequently resisted

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 21 [ CURATOR’S NOTEBOOK ]

Up Close and Personal

THE GIVE AND TAKE OF PLANT COLLECTING

by Dylan P. Hannon

ARE TROPICAL TREES AND EXOTIC PALMS When construction of the Conservatory began, much framing magnificent vistas. An elaborate tap - thought was given to the role and function the new build - estry of orchids, bromeliads, and ferns perched ing would play in education. What plants would assist in on mossy branches. Carnivorous pitcher plants that effort? One of the most outstanding palms in the oRn display, up close and personal. These are just a few of rotunda is armed with formidable, barbed “whips” at the the sights that greet visitors to the Rose Hills Foundation ends of the leaves, which consist of broad and pleated Conservatory for Botanical Science at The Huntington. fishtail-like leaflets. This specimen of Korthalsia laciniosa , Such splendor is perhaps enough for most people, but from Southeast Asia, generates a host of questions for visi - something else is at play in these scenes. Signs of a hidden tors: Why are the leaves so fiercely protected? If the “claws” realm appear in the form of small placards denoting the are for climbing, what role does this palm play in the local scientific names and geographical origins of the plants, ecology? Why are the leaflets pleated? together with seemingly random, cryptic numbers. These Our early wish list for the Conservatory included signposts are actually threads that lead to a much larger cacao ( Theobroma cacao ), the giant Victoria amazonica water story of the people and organizations responsible for bring - lily, and coconut ( Cocos nucifera ), since these are some of the ing such a wide variety of specimens to The Huntington. more familiar and thrilling “wow” plants that visitors might Just like a museum or library, a botanical garden relies on expect to see. Other criteria included plants that can’t live new acquisitions to develop a rich and relevant collection. outdoors in Southern California, as hospitable as it might

The Rain Forest on view in the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. Photo by Lisa Blackburn . seem to be, and unusual plants that people don’t have the chance to see every day. The new tropical and temperate bog collections would need to provide a diverse living resource for current and future activities. Where could we find the most suitable plants? While commercial nurseries can be a good source of plants, an important role is played by fellow institutions, such as the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Under the leadership of Just like a museum or library, a botanical garden relies on new acquisitions to develop a rich and relevant collection.

Ron Determann, conservation and conservatory director, this rather young garden, founded in 1976, has built up a rich and extensive assortment of tropical plants. Through a collaborative relationship with The Huntington, Atlanta has provided a number of notable plants since 2003. Examples include unusual cloud forest blueberries in the genera Psammisia , Anthopterus , and Cavendishia. Determann worked previously at another outstanding collections-based institu - tion, the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, Fla. This link is evident in the scope of tropical collections grown in both places and carries on to other gardens such as those at The Huntington. The flow of living material among gardens is vital, but individual collectors can also be invaluable partners. Donald

Right : Macleania pentaptera , a tropical blueberry native to Ecuador. Photo by Ernesto Rodriguez .

PRICELESS The average person understands that museums, behind the scenes, are a special combination of warehouse and laboratory, with shelf after shelf of precious specimens. Collections are a natural phenomenon within museums, an integral part of the endeavor. By contrast, botanical gardens are more often seen by visitors as, well, pretty landscapes, or mere assemblages of plants. This disparity in perception can be attributed, in part, to the widespread belief that plants have no outstanding monetary value. There are no $8 million plants, not even among ancient bonsai specimens or rare, exotic orchids. For most plant groups, rarity alone seldom raises the price of a plant above the $100 range. The value of living plants in a botanical garden is instead established mainly on the scientific, educational, and conservational usefulness of individual accessions. A common species, such as one of the many cultivated calatheas, might not find its way into a botanical garden. But if accompanying documentation establishes a specific origin in some part of the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil, it takes on significant value. Details—the name of the collector, the precise location, and the date the specimen was collected—are the currency of taxonomists. Like a signed painting with impeccable provenance, such a plant is a living masterpiece.

HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 23 [ CURATOR’S NOTEBOOK ]

In Print

WILLIAM & MARY & HUNTINGTON

The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Va.) have collabo - rat ed on two recent publications. The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 , edited by Peter C. Mancall (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), is a collec - tion of 18 essays that together place the British settlement of Jamestown in a global context. The contributors participated in an international confer - ence of the same title, held in 2004. The July 2007 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly , published by the Omohundro Institute, features an article by Peter Thompson of Oxford University, the convener of the first workshop in a series to be sponsored jointly by the two insti - The pleated leaflets of Korthalsia laciniosa , a rattan palm. Photo by Lisa Blackburn . tutes. His essay explores approaches to the study of 17th-century history. Hodel donated the aforementioned Korthalsia . He is a Two other articles in the issue arise local botanist and horticulturist who collected the plant from the numerous workshops in Thailand. It is perhaps the only example of its kind sponsored by the Early Modern growing in the United States. Hodel, a specialist in Studies Institute every year. Carol palms and ferns, belongs to a diverse pool of collectors Shammas, of USC, writes about who have contributed many plants to The Huntington’s housing in the early United States; tropical collections. Such collectors stand out through she presented an early version to their dedication to sharing valuable information, as The Huntington’s American Origins seminar group. And well as plants, including documentation on the exact Anya Zilberstein’s article about trade in the Pacific origin of specimens and tips on cultivation practices. Northwest was the subject of a workshop about early Plant collecting may begin as a personal interest California and the Pacific Rim. —an obsession, perhaps. First, there was Henry E. The September–October 2007 issue of Cactus and Huntington himself, spurred on by his garden super - Succulent Journal is dedicated to Myron Kimnach, direc - intendent, William Hertrich, collecting exotics and tor emeritus of the Huntington creating exquisite garden areas for his rambling estate. Botanical Gardens and a former Today botanical curators look to expand and refine editor of the journal. Kimnach those collections with plant material from stewards of contributes two articles himself, a complex store of knowledge—seemingly random, yet part one of his early memoirs and a description of Echeveria lyonsii , a meticulously well planned.
new species named for the current Dylan P. Hannon is Curator of the Conservatory and curator of the Huntington Desert Tropical Collections at The Huntington. Garden, Gary Lyons.

24 Spring /Summer 2007 B A C K F L A P

Daniela Bleichmar in discussion with students. Photo by Don Milici . Left: Passiflora vitifolia , from a reprint of Mutis’ 18th-century work Flora de la Real Expedición Botánica del Nuevo Reyno de Granada .

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT Members of Spain’s Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada did not travel lightly. Led by José Celestino Mutis (1732–1809) , the group included more than 40 artists who went on to pro - duce approximately 6,700 illustrations of flora and fauna. In addition to art implements and scientific instruments, the men also used books—sometimes thick leather-bound folios con - taining illustrations by well-known artists in Europe. “When scholars think about 18th-century scientific expedi - tions, they think British or French,” explains Daniela Bleichmar, These recent publica - assistant professor of art history at the University of Southern tions are proof positive California. “But Spain sponsored more than 50 expeditions to that book-length proj - the Americas during the same period.” She takes an interdisci - ects represent only plinary approach to her research, combining her interests in the one facet of a scholar’s history of science, empire, and visual culture. She holds a joint activities. Journals and appointment in the Spanish and Portuguese departments at USC. anthologies bring Mutis was aware that he had something to prove to his own together multiple readers in Europe, who were more familiar with the likes of points of view, often English naturalist Mark Catesby or Dutch scientist Nikolaus around a particular Jacquin. Expedition artists took Catesby and Jacquin illustra - topic. Mancall, editor tions into the field and critiqued them with a scrutiny usually of the Atlantic World collection and director of the USC- reserved for plant specimens. They then improved on earlier Huntington Institute, served as guest editor of a recent images or produced definitive illustrations for new plants that edition of the Huntington Library Quarterly . The first couldn’t be found among iconic treatises of the day. issue of volume 70 is titled “Travel Writing in the Early For Bleichmar, this history of illustrated books also becomes Modern World,” with articles on exploration in the 17th a history of observation. The circulation of new drawings—in and 18th centuries. One contributor to that issue found journals, periodicals, and books—was critical to artists whose her way into another recent periodical. In a special issue works became part of a continuous cycle of taxonomy. devoted to 37 innovators under the age of 36, Smithsonian “The history of the book and the history of reading has most - magazine recognizes a former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow ly been about the history of text,” explains Bleichmar, who as a of the Early Modern Studies Institute, Daniela Bleichmar historian of science and art is ensuring that books are scruti - (see Back Flap ). nized as visual records as well. On the Cover

Henry E. Huntington, a great collector of British portraiture, posed for many photographs at the ranch he purchased in 1903. In an image that is more a portrait of a house than of a larger-than-life figure, Huntington is outsized by the residence his contractor began building in 1909. Historian Sam Watters shows that the architectural plans for the house were also bigger than Huntington. Architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey played significant roles in the process, as did Huntington’s wife, Arabella. But Hunt and Grey were not the first to draft floor plans. As The Huntington prepares to open the renovated house in spring 2008, we look back on its history before construction.

THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, Non-Profit Org. ART COLLECTIONS, AND BOTANICAL GARDENS U.S. Postage PAID 1151 Oxford Road • San Marino, CA 91108 Pasadena, CA www.huntington.org Permit No. 949 Address Service Requested