significance

Peter M. Price Spec House #1

Architectural Significance

Located in the historic South Park neighborhood, this single story, stucco over wood home, begun and completed in 1909, is one of three homes in a row designed by noted architect, Irving J. Gill. In an enormous body of books and scholarly writings, Gill's reputation as one of San Diego's premier architects has been well established and the house at 1345 Granada Avenue represents a substantive example of his “New Architecture of the West”.

Gill's design of the first Price spec house came during a transition in his architectural career. One finds elements of the Prairie Style and of the Arts and Crafts movement. The presence of clear Mission style qualities, however, in addition to numerous architectural innovations found in Gill’s progressive designs, indicate that this relatively small dwelling meant to be a rental unit is not just characteristic of an architectural style but is a notable example of Irving Gill´s work as a master builder.

Having studied along side Frank Lloyd Wright in the firm of Adler and Sullivan for the two years from 1890 to 1892, Gill included “Chicago window” assemblies, consisting of combinations of casement and fixed pane windows topped with mullioned awning sashes in the Prices´ rental unit. These had a simple construction but allowed for abundant air and light flow. The south-facing window bay with the broad overhanging eaves further shows the Prairie style.

Between 1896 and 1907, Gill built Arts and Crafts homes with William Sterling Hebbard. One sees traditional plate rails and redwood wainscoting in the front portion of the Price House #2 and boxed-beam ceilings in the living room as well. During this period, Mr. Gill was said to have been influenced by the Mission style of architecture when the partnership of Hebbard & Gill was hired in 1899 to stabilize the ruins of Mission San Diego de Alcala. Thomas Hines quotes Gill´s nephew Louis stating “in exterior design. He spent many hours in measuring and studying these buildings.” It is as if Gill’s experience in 1900 with his measurements of the façade of the San Diego Mission inspired him to use his revered model to actually advantageously key his design of the Price House #2 to give the minute private house charming proportions and a graceful outline. This Mission influence further developed through his association with Frank Mead in 1907. Gill's buildings began to show a simplified Mission style. (see illustrations)The St. James Chapel of 1907-08 is seen as a Mission Revival structure by Bruce Kamerling whereas Gill’s further simplification a year later on the Price House #2 is described by Hines as having only “an abstract front parapet of a vaguely Missionesque character”. Gill would later design for the city of Torrance the Pacific Electric Station and the Bank of Torrance where not only is the parapet curve simplified as in the Price House but even the coping was eliminated. This exemplifies what Sally Woodbridge noted in her book, California Architecture that “Irving John Gill had the kind of inner direction that gave his career the quality of a narrative unfolding from one building to the next.”

Therein lies the significance of the Peter M. Price House #2. This small house is important as architectural evidence of Gill’s steady evolution daring to be simple and geting down to fundamental truths. This house is not an early experiment, nor a crowning masterpiece but rather a rarely mentioned missing link which can provide insight and understanding to the continuum of Gill’s career within the context of San Diego’s own historical development.

In Gill’s own article in the Craftsman, May 1916 regarding “Small homes for a Great Country”, he writes that “Ramona's house, a landmark as familiar in the South as some of the Missions, was built around three sides of an open space, the other side being a high garden wall”. The main Price residence #1 is clearly designed around this early California style as seen today in the Casa de Estudillo. Hazel Wood Waterman however did not complete the reconstruction of this home in Old Town until 1909, i.e. in the year after the Price house was commissioned. Moreover, Gill refers actually to Ramona´s house, not to her wedding place, indicating that his reference could probably be to Rancho Guajome. Helen Hunt Jackson had stayed there and likely used it as a basis for the fictional Morenos´ rancho. Since Gill drafted a design for the Rancho Guajome Health Company in 1905, it is likely that Gill would have met Cave Couts, Jr. at the rancho to view the site of the spa. In visiting the rancho, Gill would have entered through the zanja, an impressive covered entryway leading into the courtyard. Perhaps it was this experience which led Gill to include such a broad, heavy wood-beamed, cantilevered covering over the entry porch coming out of the solid, white stuccoed walls as a further secular element in his design for the second Price house. The Mission influence is evident then in this home with its coping along the top of the white stucco walls, twin arched parapets above the flat roof and visor-like cantilevered entry porch. It characterizes not only the early California church tradition, but also the history and romance of the secular rancho. Both aspects distilled by Gill to the essence of the tradition.

The Arts & Crafts and Mission styles seen from the front of 1345 Granada give way to the stark simplicity and practicality of the “Classic Gill” throughout the rest of the home with many notable progressive and innovative elements. The house was built of redwood with thin wall construction. The baseboards are flush with the plaster so as not to collect dust; just as the kitchen cabinet doors are flush with their frames in order to avoid grime getting into corners. The closets are raised several inches off the floor also for ease of cleaning. In the kitchen, magnesite back-splashes have been found. The original custom designed solid brass door handles and levers, intact on almost all doors, are angled for ease of grasp. All rooms open into the wide central hallway. With the skylights, the glass front door and the clever positioning of the bedroom windows and their doors, natural light is brought into the house interior. It is at this bright spot in the house that Gill placed the linen closet with its drop-down doors for folding. Hot and cold water were not only found in the kitchen and bath but also in the bedrooms. The Price House #2 is an excellent example of Mr. Gill's belief that buildings should be straightforward in their simplicity, economic in their use of materials, and be made for use. In contrast to the street view with its hint of the California heritage, the look of the house from the backyard is sheer, plain and substantial; devoid of extraneous exterior decoration, a basic utilitarian, cubist building to be used in 1909 as a “Home of the Future”. Physical Detail

Windows: The window bay in the middle south-facing bedroom is original. Projecting out 17” under the broad Prairie-style eave, this composite window consists of three pairs of casement windows and their three awning windows. The interior screens of bronze mesh remain on the awnings but had been removed from the main casement windows throughout the house.

With the exception of this one south-facing bay, all other window sashes had been replaced with jalousie aluminum windows sometime in the 1960’s. In 2003, these too were removed and wooden sashes rebuilt on the dimensions of the original windows of the south-facing bay. Each window dimension seems to be determined by a mix and match combination of standard sized casments, awnings, and fixed panes. The standard height for nearly all casement sashes is 43 3/4“ and for the awning sashes is 13 1/2“. All awning sashes are separated by wood mullions with four or two lites. Above all the windows and attached to each awning sash is a 1½” high curved rain guard which projects 2 3/4” out from the window assembly.

The west elevation has two reconstructed composite windows. As a typical Gill design, both have a central fixed window flanked by casements with a horizontal band of lights above made up of three mullioned awning windows, the center one with four lites and the sides each with two.

All windows in the house have the original frames. They are inset flush with the surrounding stucco walls except for the sill plates and rain guards. These guards protect the top of the casements and are themselves protected by an “L” shaped strip of galvanized metal.

The period hardware for the reconstructed windows is not original to the house with the exception of the halves of the hinges of the awning windows on the south-side of the living room which were never removed and had remained attached to the house. They were galvanized 2 3/8” full mortised three knuckle Stanley Sweetheart butt hinges. Also the strike plates for the casement windows in the dining room and living room are original.

A screen on the north side of the utility room was removed. No window was originally built in this opening; there were no mortises for hinges.There is a pair of windows from the bath on the south side of the utility room; giving further evidence that the utility room was originally intended to be simply a screened porch. 

Roof:

a. Shape: The roof is a flat roof with parapet walls all around with the exception of the space above the front porch. Square coping 5“ high is the only detailing to be found. The west portion of the parapet rises on both sides of the porch roof to arcs reminiscent of a mission façade b. Material: The roof is of a modified bitumen composition material. Most of the underlying redwood roof deck boards of 5 3/4 “ x 3/4” are a surprising 17’4” long. c. Chimney The chimney consists of two terra cotta flues which extend out of brick masonry coated with stucco.

Description of Interior:

Site and surroundings:

Background and Historical Significance

The history of California had reached an important turning point at the time Peter M. Price commisioned Irving Gill to design the rental house on Granada in 1909. Advancements in technologies such as electricity, communication and transportation were effecting change in the economic and social fabric of the country. Political reaction to the changes surfaced through the Progressive Movement and manifested progressive cultural innovations in architecture.

In the early 1900's, Erastus Bartlett Webster, began to develop the tract of land known as the South Park Addition purchased by his grandfather more than a decade earlier. The Bartlett Estate Company heavily marketed South Park as an elite neighborhood where "no saloons, stores, apartment houses or flats [were] permitted", and "no house shall be erected ... to cost less than $3500" (S.D. Union, 5/27/06). According to advertisements from the San Diego Union, there were two major advantages to purchasing lots in South Park: water, sewer, electricity, and sidewalks, were already brought to each lot, and, starting May 7, 1906, the streetcar began to serve the community from 25th & "D" to 30th & Amherst ("D" became Broadway and Amherst became Cedar). Lot 3 of block 29 was priced at $1100 according to a list issued by the Bartlett company on November 4, 1907. Such a planned community with municipal utilities and amenities to improve health and convenience of daily life were an appropriate setting for homes of an Irving Gill design.

Mr. Peter M. Price purchased the lot in the South Park Addition from the Bartlett Estate Company on the 16th of June 1908. According to a Notice of Completion of Contract filed on December 2, 1909, Mr. Price entered into a contract on July 31, 1909 to erect a frame and stucco cottage on the property. This is exactly during the time that Schaffer notes that “the years 1909 to 1911 provide the most telling case study of Gill´s Progressive leanings.” The San Diego Union had published an article on August 2, 1908 detailing the Prices’ main residence which would then be constructed on the southeast comer of Bean (later Granada) and Ash Streets by October 1908. According to the article, "The plans, which were drawn by Irving J. Gill, call for a structure of a particularly attractive and distinctive style of architecture, resembling somewhat the old mission effect …The exterior finish will be of plaster over a lattice of wooden lath." Many of the specifications for the main residence were incorporated into the plans of the Price House #2. The firm chosen for the construction of the second house was different than of the main residence. Instead of W.W. Harris & Co., the contractors were Charles A. Gaines and Thomas B. Forehan. They were used for some of Gill’s experimental dwellings as well as one of his finest, the Henry H. Timken house. The Price House #2 was completed on the 30th of November 1909, the same day that Gill presented his design plans for the revolutionary electric fountain on Horton Plaza.

The Lincoln-Roosevelt League was launched in California in 1907 by a committee of progressive Republicans. Two of the three San Diegans involved were George Marston, a patron of Irving Gill, and Ed Fletcher, a real estate developer associated with the Bartlett Estates. One chief aim of the league was to break the influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company within state politics. This group helped in 1911 to elect as governor a Progressive reformer, Hiram Johnson, who one year later ran as the vice presidential candidate along side Teddy Roosevelt on the Progressive Bull Moose ticket.

The trolley line one block away from the Price House was a miniature version of the conflicting railway interests state-wide and nationally. Fletcher acquired the franchise for the electric South Park and East Side Railway, an enterprise growing out of the operations of the Bartlett Estate Company with which he was associated. This line begun in March 1906, became a strong factor in local transportation and the development of the residence district on the east side of City Park but with its expansion northward towards Fletcher´s development in Del Mar, the line conflicted with one being laid to Point Loma, Roseville and Ocean Beach by a Spreckels company. Ultimately leading in February of 1911 to a plebiscite on a 50 year city railway franchise.

Although street cars were critical for the development at the turn of the century for neighborhoods such as Golden Hill, Bankers Hill and Hillcrest, there is some indication that the advent of the automobile was a factor in the developments around the Price Houses. Ed Fletcher was an early automobile enthusiast and may have known Peter Price as the owner of the Broadway garage. Nathaniel Smith & Erwin Laraway who purchased Price´s newly constructed house at 1345 Granada in 1909 were ranchers with property and groves in East County. Their dealings with the Cuyamaca Water Company or their interest in automobiles may have meant that they were also acquainted with Fletcher and Price. Notable about the Peter M. Price House #2 is that the front porch does not have one set of steps but rather two. An entry walk leads from the sidewalk to the porch but on the north there is another toward a driveway. Already in 1909 there is a design feature accomodating the automobile.

In her article “A Significant Sentence upon the Earth”, Sarah Schaffer in defining Irving Gill as a Progressive architect distinguishes the Californian version of the Arts and Crafts movement from the national by “its ready incorporaton of elements from its Catholic Spanish-Mexican heritage, most prominently the missions, which provided newly established Californians with a sense of tradition”. This observation sheds light on why Gill’s commission for Price who had recently arrived from Illinois in 1908 to build a house for the two Montanans, Smith and Laraway who came a year earlier to San Diego, was designed in a Mission Style. The “Social Problem Novel” Ramona may have also influenced the men´s decisions on architectural style. The book was elevated to legendary status within twenty years of Helen Hunt Jackson´s death in 1885 and created a nationwide craze of Ramonana. James Sandos wrote in an article about the phenomenon that “the enormous popularity of Ramona inspired promoters and developers to exploit in their efforts to lure tourists west to invest in land and to experience the sunshine.” It was during this wave of interest throughout America in the California heritage that G. Aubrey Davidson, president of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce proposed on July 9, 1909 that San Diego should stage an exposition in 1915 to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. For a city with lagging population growth and a weak economy, this would not only provide for a major attraction but for park development. Three weeks after the proposal was made, Peter Price as a real estate developer began building his second house on Granada Avenue, conveniently located to the City Park and the future exposition. The streetside missionesque qualities added to the house might have actually been meant to indeed be a lure for visitors to San Diego to invest in the property and acquire a sense of Californian tradition. One wonders also whether Irving Gill fortuitously took the opportunity to design a structure with prototype elements to demonstrate how he would have envisioned the future exposition buildings.

The Peter M. Price Spec House #1 is an important design of residential architecture at the beginning of the 20th century in San Diego. The house is architecturally significant because of the simplified Mission Style exterior and Progressive interior design by Irving J. Gill. There is significance to his innovative use of materials as stucco, concrete and redwood through the workmanship of Gaines and Forehan in building with thin-wall construction and other labor saving strategies. Its historical significance lies in its setting within the planned development of the Bartlett Estates in South Park at the time leading up to the Panama-California Exposition and the association with the developers and promoters of the time as well as its accommodations for new technologies. Further significance is felt through its connections to the romance of early California heritage.

>William E. Smythe wrote in his 1908 History of San Diego:

“The real prosperity of San Diego during the early years of the new century finds its best illustration not in new hotels and business blocks, not in street railway extensions nor in rising prices of real estate, but in the number and beauty of comfortable little homes which have been built throughout the length and breadth of the city.”

The significance specifically of Irving Gill’s “little home” at 1345 Granada is then well understood through the words of Bertha H. Smith in her article “Creating an American Style of Architecture - Mr. Gill's Distinctive Concrete Houses - The Gospel of Simplicity And Straight Lines.”

One of the most remarkable things about this new type of architecture is the democracy of it. Without and within there is little difference, save in size, between a laborer's cottage of three rooms and a city house of twenty; and no appreciable difference in the finish of drawing-room and kitchen. Every detail of sanitation and practical utility is carefully studied for kitchens of whatever size so that, whether presided over by mistress or maid, they make for economy of time and work and worry.

Keeping this statement in mind, the comparisons between the large masterpiece buildings such as the Marston, Lee and Dodge homes with the Prices’ three bedroom rental cottage allow an appreciation of Gill's innovative Progressive design for ALL people.