Glamorous History: Paul R. Williams, California Dream Architect
Welcome to the first entry in our new column: Glamorous History!
Architect Paul Revere Williams invented the iconography of the California Dream, from the pink and green of the Beverly Hills hotel to the sorts of celebrity homes that made fame look fun and elegant. Even if some of those 2,500+ buildings and homes are no longer standing, Williams’ influence of effusive yet deeply cool design reached nearly every corner of American life, from banks to public housing to homes for scions and celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball.
He designed neighborhoods that evoked American Dreaming, grand hotels in Colombia, futuristic A-frame churches in Vegas, St. Jude’s Children Hospital in Minnesota, and so much more. His blueprints were social, curvy, graceful, and buoyant—homes that communicated success and warmth, often focusing on the most comfortable outdoor elements. Stone fireplaces were one of his signatures, and room flow was often focused to highlight the swimming pool and patio outside.
A 1991 issue of Harvard Design Magazine described Williams’ residential designs as “affable, well-mannered, gracious, and graceful, a mite different but not so different as to shock . . . a California style of self-assured, easy worldliness.” It was Palladian windows and carved wrought iron mixed with American suburbia. “I believe Williams’s story is one that only could have taken place in Los Angeles,” Janna Ireland wrote for Curbed. “When he began his career here in the early 1920s, the city had three factors that allowed him to flourish: lots of money, lots of land, and a handful of wealthy white people liberal or desperate enough to commission a young Black architect.”
Williams also worked on public housing and civic buildings. In a 1977 interview, he said, “Expensive homes are my business and social housing is my hobby.” He designed housing projects in Compton, YMCA buildings, post offices, Baptist churches, and hospitals. Williams, known as the Architect to the Stars, became involved in public housing design when he was appointed to the National Board of Municipal Housing in 1940.
In an interview with NPR, his granddaughter Karen Hudson talked about how her grandfather would deal with the racism of the time. “He taught himself to draw upside down so white clients wouldn’t be uncomfortable sitting next to him,” she said. He would also tour construction sites with hands clasped behind his back, “so as to avoid the embarrassment of having whites refuse to shake his extended hand” one book states.
In spite of this racism, he was able to exact a glamorous, hopeful version of what American living could mean, no matter what income bracket you belonged to, whether you were walking into church or The Polo Lounge. Below, some facts about his life and work:
1. He was the first Black architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, and he retired his practice in 1973 after 50 years of work.
2. Born near downtown Los Angeles in 1894, Williams’ parents both died from tuberculosis before their son’s fifth birthday. He was adopted by a family his parents had met at the First African Methodist Episcopal church.
3. Sinatra’s patio bed! “Frank Sinatra wanted a bedroom; press a button and the doors open to the patio. Press another button and the bed rolls out into the patio,” Williams told journalist Maggie Savoy in a 1970 interview.
4. There were almost bubble homes all over America. Having developed a reputation as a master of small-home design, Williams collaborated with architect Wallace Neff to envision a new kind of home for Americans. Neff had created the Airform House—or bubble house—in response to housing shortages after World War II. Inspired by soap bubbles and seashells, Neff saw the circular home as a solution to affordable housing challenges with inexpensive materials and sturdy design, impervious to the elements.
Williams and Neff shopped their Airform developments around the U.S., Africa, and South America, with Neff handling construction and Williams designing landscaping and amenities. In 1953, they proposed a public housing development for 1,000 Airform homes in Las Vegas, as well as plans for developments for Native American reservations. Unfortunately, no one could quite get behind the round home, and the plans never got off the ground.
5. Williams designed the original star-shaped building for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
6. He built a home for LA’s oldest African-American congregation, the First A.M.E. church in the West Adams neighborhood of Sugar Hill. Williams was a member of the church, and his funeral was held there in 1980.
7. Williams was known for his signature luxuriant curves, warm accents like commas in a building’s design, from dramatic staircases to the Palm Springs Tennis Club’s snaking counters. Financier and (and noted car collector!) Peter W. Mullin said of the Williams-designed 1925 Colonial home he lived in: “The first time I saw it, I didn’t think I could afford the house, but if I could afford the staircase, I wanted to take it with me!”
8. A building that could only exist in Vegas. Williams’ love of curves was taken to sci-fi proportions with his 1961 design of the La Concha Motel. A classic piece of Googie architecture, the motel’s shell lobby now sits in Vegas’ neon graveyard, The Neon Museum.
When the motel opened, it was one of the larger properties on The Strip and attracted celeb clientele from Muhammad Ali to The Carpenters. Until its closure in 2004, the motel maintained a high occupancy rate despite lacking the usual hotel amenities like a restaurant, casino, or pool.
9. One of Williams’ first projects was a 32-room mansion and 18-car garage for automobile magnate E.L. Cord.
10. Meet California’s most enchanting pool! Designed for CBS founder Jay Paley, Williams built this home in Holmby Hills in 1936. The pool’s tiles were imported from France to form a mosaic sunburst.
11. California glitz brought to Colombia—After a 1940s plan by Medellín officials to transform the Colombian city into a “brisk modern city”, Williams was asked to design Hotel Nutibara, the first large-scale hotel built in the city.
12. Until the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy led to the hotel’s demise, The Ambassador Hotel had been the je ne sais quoi of Hollywood, host to Oscars parties, every president of the era, and the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub, renovated by Williams. During its time, the club hosted every entertainer you could think of, from Liberace to Richard Pryor, Lena Horne to Barbra Streisand. A “house full of stars,” the nightclub was a papier-mache, Hawaiian moon waterfall paradise. “Other nightclubs were like copies from nightclubs in movies. But the Grove was the real thing…” singer Rosemary Clooney once said.
13. “Can you imagine if there were 190 Frank Lloyd Wright homes?” Mark Morgan, a resident of SeaView told The San Bernadino Sun. SeaView is a 190-home neighborhood that Williams designed for the consummate 1960s middle-class buyer. Marketed to “veterans qualified for government backed loans” and “second (and third) home buyers looking for more quality”, SeaView’s homes were based around eight Space-Age floor plans with custom finishes to set each home apart. The homes featured floor-to-ceiling stone fireplaces and materials like aluminum and Formica that felt new at the time.
SeaView’s developer touted Williams as “that architect of architects, the eminent Paul R. Williams…designer of homes for Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Julie London, Danny Thomas, and many top executives.” The homes also featured the backyard as an extension of the living room, directing the room away from the street. The floor plans, with dreamy names like “The Monte Carlo” and “The Copacabana”, were emblematic of Williams’ design personality.
“He is not an extreme or ‘metal tube’ modernist,” Ebony magazine described in 1949. “He believes good home design is sensible and not tricky, warm and friendly rather than severe and mechanical.”
Much of the information and some of the photos here are from The Paul Revere Williams Project. Please see their site for a true treasure trove of his work!
April 10, 2020
In "Features"
