Los Angeles County
Biographies
IRVING J. GILL
GILL, IRVING J., Architect, San Diego, Cal., was born in Tully, N. Y., April 26, 1870, the son of Joseph Gill and Cynthia C. (Scullen) Gill.
He attended the Madison Street School of Syracuse, N. Y., and began his architectural work as a student in the office of Ellis G. Hall, of Syracuse, in 1889. The following year he studied under J. L. Silsby in Chicago, and in 1891 was a pupil of Messrs. Ader & Sullivan of Chicago. He was appointed a member of the Architectural Staff of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1892, but his health became impaired and he was compelled to resign his position, going to Southern California to recuperate.
Locating at San Diego, Cal., Mr. Gill spent several months resting, and in 1893, having regained his health, opened an office there for the practice of his profession. In 1901 Mr. Gill returned to the East, where for the next few years he was engaged in the design and construction of various buildings, but devoted himself principally to private residences. Among the notable homes built by him were those of Albert H. Olmstead, at Newport, R. I.; Miss Ellen Mason, at Newport R. I.; Mrs. Shaw-Safe, at East Greenwich, R. I.; Miss Sarah Birkhead, at Portsmouth, R. I.; Louis Butler McCagg, at Bar Harbor, Maine.
Returning to California in the latter part of 1904, Mr. Gill resumed his work in San Diego, and has since maintained his offices there. In the interim he has been among the leading architects of that section and is classed by authorities on the subject as one of the eminent members of the profession in America.
One of the notable works of Mr. Gill was the design and construction, in 1911, of a community of model cottages at Sierra Madre, California, at the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains.
“The Craftsman,” a publication devoted to architecture and allied subjects, was inspired by the Sierra Madre group to pay a splendid tribute to the art of Mr. Gill, stating in part:
“In the West, where man not only dares to be honest but is encouraged in every way to express himself, there has arisen a simpler and more distinctive architecture. One architect of the Coast, Irving J. Gill, after wandering for years among the inspired work of the past—Grecian, Roman, Italian, early English—groping hopefully through the maze that every architect is forced by custom and education to thread, dissatisfied with the best that he could produce and convinced of the absurdity and dishonesty of plagiarism, has had the courage to throw aside every accepted belief of the present day and start afresh with the simplest forms, the straight line, the pier, lintel and arch. And he uses these without ornamentation, save for the natural grace of a clinging vine that is allowed to trail about a doorway or droop over the severe line of the roof. Instead of delving into the past works of great men, trying to adapt what has been, to the conditions of the present, he bends his efforts to determine what should be, regardless of precedent. By this return to fundamental needs, he has hit upon an architecture so simple and beautiful that restless tourists, practical business men, workmen, architects and artists turn aside from their work or play on the highway just for the pleasure of seeing so satisfying a thing as a house of his designing.
“The houses that Mr. Gill designs stand so pre-eminently for permanence in their simplicity that they can no more be disregarded than the old Missions, and are as surely influencing the architecture of the West.”
In the same issue of “The Craftsman” the editor of the publications spoke of Mr. Gill’s work in the following terms:
“While we find still in Mr. Gill’s . . . cottages the influence of the early Spanish architecture, which really means the influence of the Moors through the Spaniards, we also find the creative spirit, the fearless use of the brain by the man who knows how to work.”
One of the most beautiful and efficient productions by Mr. Gill is the Wilde Fountain in the civic center of San Diego, an electric affair of alternating colors which was designed and built by Mr. Gill for L. J. Wilde who presented it to the city. This is regarded as one of the most artistic fountains in America.
In the early part of 1912 Mr. Gill was chosen by the Dominguez Land Company, a great California corporation, to design and supervise the construction of a model industrial city. This town, known as Torrance, lies near Los Angeles, California, and will be made up of factories of various description, administration buildings and all that goes to make an ideal manufacturing or industrial city, in one division, while another is set aside at the residence section and will be made up of the homes, schools, library, parks, children’s playgrounds; the whole having paved streets and every modern facility, which will add to the convenience beauty and sanitation of the place.
Mr. Gill has devoted himself to this work to the exclusion of practically everything else, although he conducts his offices in San Diego and holds commissions for many important structures in various parts of Southern California.
Mr. Gill is a member of the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and his only other affiliation outside of business is with the Gamut Club of Los Angeles.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 571,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2010 Joyce
Rugeroni.
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