Houses for a Californian imagination

Author D.J. Waldie ruminates on the Spanish Colonial Revival style, inspired by dinner at the Santa Monica home of Angel City Press publishers Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley. From his blog at KCET Local:

The architects of the Spanish Colonial Revival managed a diversity of solutions to the problem of making a home in California. Human-scaled, in touch with the landscape, and narratively coherent, their designs showed how unforced historicism and modernity might be successfully joined.

Between its rise just before World War I and its devolution into mediocrity after 1935 � in less time than the careers of some its best practitioners � the Spanish Colonial Revival gave Los Angeles a distinctive architectural vocabulary, a habit of indoor and outdoor living, a playfulness that signaled something new about domesticity, and a body of well-wrought town plans, public places, and houses.

They were houses of white stucco and red tile . . . of deeply recessed doorways, windows, and portals . . . of field tiles and forged iron . . . of sunny gardens and shaded corners . . . of loggias and quiet arcades leading into the light. They were reserved (at least the best of them) but joyful houses that promised delight. They were houses for a Californian imagination.

I still miss the solidness and shapes of my Spanish-style house south of South Carthay, built in 1934. We moved west about eight years ago and it took a full gutting and reimagining (by minds other than mine) for the new house, built in 1948, to approach the character of the old.