Our day should have started with a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's 1923 Millard Residence - La Miniatura. Sadly the owner could not be there to let us in so the pleasures of the garden were explored and windows peered into. Blockwork not wearing well on a heavily wooded and damp site. (Illustrated below left)
On then to the much lauded Gamble House - Greene and Greene's masterpiece. (above right) The visit was preceded by a walk round viewing several - possibly dozens - of their houses. If you like Swiss chalets,these are for you. Beautifully set in leafly suburb; clever use of clinker brick in garden and garage walls.
The Gamble House was, frankly, a bit much. Very precious - touching, photographing and possibly even breathing not permitted inside. The visible joinery was very clever and, in the best arts and crafts tradition, inventive to a fault. By the end of the tour one felt that the balance between art and craft had gone wrong. I am grateful to Mervyn Miller for putting things in perspective with a quote from Reyner Banham's 'Los Angeles':
'But tangled through this play of wide domestic spaces, uniting and differentiating them, is Greene's obsession with wooden construction and with visible craftsmanship. This obsession neatly footnotes Gebhard's observation of the way that European art movements (here, Arts and Crafts) lose their moral content and become forms of styling when they arrive on American soil. If the Gamble House is one of the ultimate gems of the Craftsman Movement in California it is also - in part - a paste jewel. Look into the roof spaces and you will find that the construction of what isn't seen , far from being carefully and loveingly wrought, tends to be the usual old US carpenter's crudwork, trued up with odds and ends of lumber and spiked together with cock-eyed six inch nails'
Says it all really. Not a house to live in. Another Greene and Greene house is shown below right.
The afternoon visit to the Rose Bowl (above left) was a pleasure. Seating nearly 100,000 in an elegant bowl all of whom enjoy great views - pity anyone sitting other than in the covered boxes during a daytime game (if such happen) as there's no shade anywhere.
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