Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform

About this book

"This study traces the architect's journey from his native Syracuse to a Chicago apprenticeship with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright to the development of his career as an early modernist architect in Southern California. In assessing Gill's still underappreciated achievement, Thomas S. Hines places his work within an international context: as Gill's identification with the modern movement developed, his work evolved from the influence of the East Coast Shingle Style and Wright's Midwest Prairie Style to become closer in spirit to the work of the Austrian Adolf Loos. Gill and Loos were both admired by the second-generation modernists Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra, who studied under Loos in Vienna and learned from Gill in Los Angeles. Hines also explores the social dimensions of Gill's work. His interest in the contemporary Progressive Movement, particularly its ethos of social, economic, and gender equality, was the wellspring for a series of projects for middle- and lower-income residents as well as for an intense concern with the functionality and convenience of his domestic designs.". "Illustrated throughout with black-and-white archival photographs and featuring twelve pages of full-color plates, Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform presents a comprehensive analysis of the oeuvre of a "rediscovered" modern master."--BOOK JACKET.