Houses of Los Angeles, 1885-1919 (Urban Domestic Architecture Series, Vol. 1)

With the completion of the American railroads in the 1880s and the publicity that followed, Los Angeles business elite lured Easterners and Midwesterners to Americas recently conceived Eden. A city of farms and groves was transformed into a city of houses. From Pasadena to Santa Monica, diverse architecture revealed the independent spirit of early residents. Queen Anne-, Arts and Crafts,- Beaux-Arts-, Moorish- and Mission-style houses were designed by the citys first generation of trained architects. Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, Greene & Greene, Robert D. Farquhar, and Alfred F. Rosenheim initiated Los Angeles engagement with national and international architectural developments.

Los Angeles Houses, 1885-1919 is a portrait of where and how Angelenos lived in and around downtown before the city was transformed by the grand scale residential developments of the 1920s. 38 of the early Los Angeles houses are profiled with over 350 archival duotone photographs and landscape and floor plans, brought together for the first time.