99% Invisible - 255- The Architect of Hollywood

Episode Date: April 11, 2017

Los Angeles is rich with architectural diversity. On the same block, you could find a retro-futuristic Googie diner next to a Spanish-style mansion, sitting comfortably alongside a Dutch Colonial dwelling, all in close proximity to a Deconstructivist concert hall. In … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Picture for a minute. Los Angeles, the grand marquee's downtown, the Spanish-style mansions in the hills, that Jetsons like diners and drive-ins. Los Angeles is an architectural popery. It's the kind of place where if you want to go and build a house that looks like a Dutch colonial

or a mansion with Doric columns or a sleek modernist flat roof thing, that's fine. Anything goes. That's Avery Trouffleman. In Los Angeles, architecturally, there are no rules, no unifying style. Because for people flocking to Hollywood in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the growing city gave them an opportunity to build whatever kind of house they wanted, French chateau, futuristic modern, Italian

villa, whatever. And there was this one particular architect who could do it all and do it well. And his name was Paul Revere Williams. Paul Williams' contribution to American architecture can be described in a number of different ways. This is architect Phil Freelon. He was an incredibly gifted residential designer. And on the West Coast, particularly in Los Angeles, he was known for designing residences of a number of Hollywood stars.

Paul Williams designed Frank Sinatra's Bachelor Pad, a mansion for Lucille Ball and Desiarnes. He made additions on the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Palm Springs Tennis Club. He also helped design the Stately and Sparse LA County Courthouse. And if you've ever flown into LAX, you can see this really space-age-y-looking structure, almost like a flying saucer with long legs that landed in front of Terminal 1.

That's called the theme building, and Paul Williams was part of the team that made that. And the sheer volume of his work, he produced over 3,000 projects in his career, in his 50-year career. And that's quite an achievement. No one is exactly sure how many buildings he worked on. It's certainly in the thousands, but still, he was largely an invisible figure in architectural history, as well as Los Angeles' history.

He designed everything from mentions, luxury hotels, and car dealerships to hospitals, housing projects, and public schools. In addition to the variety of Williams commissions, he could work in a huge variety of styles. Seriously, if you pick two of his buildings at random, in most cases, you'd never know that the same architect made them both. So, he really didn't have a particular signature move or form or material usage that you could drive up and say, that's a Paul Wienes building. But if you look at the body of work,

there is a level of excellence and a consistency in the quality of the work, not necessarily in a stylistic manner. He is the architect who helped make the multi-style style of Los Angeles. And Los Angeles, in turn, helped make him. In Los Angeles, Paul Williams was able to build a career for himself that he probably couldn't have had

anywhere else in America as an African-American architect. Paul Williams, African-American architect, who was much more than an African-American architect, he was simply one of the best architects of the 20th century. This is Karen Hudson, Paul Williams' biographer, and also his granddaughter. I was very close to her, my girl, a black away. Hudson says the Los Angeles, her grandfather grew up in.

Back in the early 1900s, was pretty different from what it is now. I mean, it was open spaces. He was born downtown, Ayson, Santhip. You know downtown was a heart of LA. We were talking in 1894. And in 1894 when Williams was born Los Angeles was pretty much a small downtown surrounded with bean fields and orange groves and the wild Pacific. And the population of LA was skyrocketing. From 1890 to 1900 the city doubled from 50,000 to 100,000 residents in just 10 years.

The growing city was full of people that had come west for a better life. Paul Williams' parents were from Memphis and had moved to Los Angeles just before he was born. They came to California for their health because they both had tuberculosis. And that's how he was orphaned before he was four. Williams was raised by foster parents. He had a brother who was nine years older than him who was raised in a different family and died at a young age of pneumonia. Without much of a family of his own, Williams spent a lot of time in the neighborhood,

in downtown LA, which was full of immigrants from all over the world. I mean, he talks about learning conservation and gardening and things from the Japanese kids in the neighborhood, and so you sort of soaked all that up. In this diverse group of kids all went to school together, even though Paul Williams remembers being the only black kid. There were no segregated schools in LA. There weren't that many black kids, but they weren't segregated. This would be instrumental later in life.

When his high school connections would prove very valuable in Paul Williams' career. It's hard to say exactly where Williams desired to be an architect came from. He did have a natural talent for drawing, and then somehow he learned that architecture was a profession, and then, resolutely decided it was for him, which is kind of incredible when you think about it. He never knew another architect, never really even heard of another architect when he was young. When Williams told his high school guidance counselor that he wanted to practice architecture, he was told to give it up. He should not try to be an architect.

He should be a doctoral lawyer, because black people would always need doctors and lawyers. And white people would not hire him as an architect and black people couldn't afford him. So he should just give up. Didn't happen. Williams didn't go to architecture school. Instead, he attended different art schools and engineering school,

just cobbling together the skills he needed in drafting, landscaping, and materials, before he was certified as a contractor in 1915. And then came the challenge of actually getting hired. In his own notes, he said he got dressed in his best suit, and which he probably only had one for church, but best suit had his little briefcase and he went knocking on doors. He approached all the architects in the area

that he admired and showed them his portfolio. They all said no. But if they smiled when they said no, then he went back the next day and kept knocking. And finally he had two offers, one for $3 a week, maybe five, and one for nothing. But he took the job that was for nothing because he thought he would learn more and be in a better position to advance. And after the first week they started paying him.

Paul Williams worked for a landscape architect, a residential architect, and a commercial architect before he was licensed to practice in California in 1921. The following year, he started his own firm, Paul R. Williams and Associates. Williams's first solo commission was a house for a well-connected high school friend, and his neighborhoods in Los Angeles blossomed word about Williams' spread. In the 20s or early 30s, if you go to dinner at somebody's house, because they have a new house, they say, who's your architect? There's one more, one more, one more.

Williams had an impeccable sense of scale. And he knew just how to situate a structure on a property to make best use of beautiful views and sunlight. He helped create what would come to be known as the Hollywood style, that opulent mixture of Mediterranean, European, and colonial influences, with swimming pools and sweeping staircases. It's a rich and sumptuous sensibility, but Paul Williams kept these mentions very clean and classy. Paul R. Williams and associates grew quickly and became renowned.

Although some clients would be taken aback when they met Williams. Because you know they may have read about him, you know, may have heard about him, but they didn't realize he was black. He didn't want people to be uncomfortable. And often they were. I mean it's one thing to hire somebody, it's one thing to think that he's the best around and you want the best around. It's another thing to think that he's the best around and you want the best around. It's another thing to actually touch him.

Many of his white clients had never interacted with a black professional before. Williams had to find ways to work around white people's discomfort with him. He would not put people in a position where they felt like they had to shake his hand if they didn't want to. So he would put his hands at his pockets or behind his back. And Williams also recognized that many clients wouldn't want to take a seat next to him. And so to make them feel comfortable and to possibly persuade people who weren't sure

about having this black man, he could sit on one side of the desk, you'd be on the other side. And he would ask you, you know, do you want a formal living room, do you want a formal dining room, do you want a din because you have little kids, do you want this, do you want a formal living room? Do you want a formal dining room? Do you want a den? Because you have little kids. Do you want this? Do you want that?

And then facing the client opposite the table, Paul Williams would sketch out a vision of the house, upside down, so that it faced the client. And he would sketch it upside down and come alive before your eyes. And I never interviewed anyone who saw him do it, who did not just light up as soon as we talked about it. It was like you should have seen him.

You've heard the expression ginger Rogers did everything for the stared at except backwards and in high heels. Well Paul Williams did everything his white peers did except upside down and better. Williams was not the first architect to draw upside down, but it's indicative of the lengths he went to accommodate his white clients. He always dressed impeccably and worked tirelessly. He once wrote about a meeting with a potential client who warned

Williams that he was also speaking with a number of other architects. The potential client asked how soon Williams could submit preliminary drawings. Four o'clock tomorrow afternoon said Williams. The client thought it was impossible because all the other architects had asked for two or three weeks. And you can bet that yes, Paul Williams delivered that plan at four o'clock the next day as promised. But he didn't tell the client that he had worked for 22 hours straight without eating or sleeping. He felt like he had to be light years better just to be accepted.

And, you know, often he wasn't accepted. Sometimes Williams was unwelcome in the very places he was designing. And even after he had earned the respect of his clients, he had to tolerate mistreatment from subcontractors and painters and plumbers. You know, you hire him to do your home and then some of the sub people who are working on the home are like, I'm not taking orders from this black guy. It's a regular kind of thing. Throughout his career, even as he designed mansions for wealthy clients, Williams also designed affordable homes for middle-class Angelinos.

Any published books of inexpensive construction patterns that anyone could use to build a home of their own. You could send in for $10 and get a floor plan for your house. Williams also worked on a number of projects specifically for black institutions, including buildings on Howard University's campus in DC and the 28th Street, William C.A., which is in a historically black neighborhood in L.A. 28th year, why I was very important to him, he put in the facade likenesses of Frederick Douglass and Booker D. Washington because he believed that if young black boys could see that excellence every day as they walked in,

it would make them a different kind of person. He did a lot of charitable work, he did lots of things for children, and not just in the African American community. When he designed St. Jude's research hospital in Memphis, he did it completely free of charge. And he simply was one of the most prolific architects of his time, of any race. He produced thousands of projects in his 50-year career. He died in 1980, and his funeral was held in a church of his own design, filled with friends, family, and past clients. Paul R. Williams and associates continued working without him for a while.

Well, after he died in 1980, the office went on for a couple of years. I'm not quite sure how long it, but it essentially came to an end some time by the end of the 80s. This is Leslie Liebers of the University of Memphis. And then all of the material from his practice was stored at a branch of the Broadway Federal Savings banks. And this branch was a building Williams designed. He designed it, but the more important thing was that one of his daughters married the founder

of Broadway Federal, so it was essentially a family relationship. And most of Williams documents and records were just there in the bank, stored in a room. They weren't even an avult. But then, in 1992, after a group of officers were acquitted of the brutal beating of Rodney King, the city of LA erupted into violent protest. That branch of Broadway federal burned to the ground and everything in it burned to the

ground, and that was pretty much the end of everything available about Paul Williams. This is where the Paul Williams project comes in. The Paul Williams project is primarily a research project that seeks to accumulate information, photographs, etc. about Paul Williams, principally his career. And a big part of this project was actually collecting information and hunting down which buildings were designed by Williams. The project, which is based at the University of Memphis, sent a photographic team to Los Angeles and Palm Springs in Las Vegas to start a catalog of Paul Williams buildings, but

they were not always easy to find. Because he was a master at period style, So, you know, he would have a Spanish style house next to a colonial style house, next to a French provincial style house or Gothic style house. He'd be like, okay. The project has found less than half of William's work. Who knows how many of his buildings have been unknowingly torn down or renovated beyond recognition? And the Paul Williams project is always hearing about more buildings to add to the catalog, mostly in Los Angeles, but not exclusively.

William's buildings are all over the country, and there are a few abroad. We discover them all the time. And then we verify, we verify every house. So we go to the city documents, when pulling permits, all of that. They're constantly checking and correcting themselves. But it's really tough work because they have to go by accounts and records, which were mostly burned. And then Williams' style is just all over the place. He just didn't stick to one thing. He was always learning and developing.

And of course, he would listen to his clients and try and respond to what they needed and what their desires were. That's architect Phil Freelon again. And I asked him if Williams had to be responsive to his clients and flexible in his style in order to survive as a black architect. I think that Paul Williams desired to satisfy his clients is something that many architects share and it's not necessarily tied to race, although I will point out that he had to make certain adjustments in his approach to clients because of who he was in the time period in which

he practiced. By the way, Phil Freelan is also a big deal. He worked on the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and most recently. The National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in Washington, DC, where I was the architect of record. Phil Freelahn had already gotten into an architecture program before he had even heard of Paul Williams. I was maybe into my third or fourth year of school before I learned about Paul Williams

and that was really on my own. It wasn't anything in the curriculum or in architectural history that mentioned him. Let's make this clear. There are a lot of black architects who get left out of the textbooks. Paul Williams was not the first black architect in America, but he was the first to be accepted as a member of the AIA, the American Institute of Architects. The American Institute of Architects is the leading professional organization in the US for licensed architects and others

in the profession. Paul Williams joined the AIA in 1923. And every black architect I know, they know who Paul Williams is. And I haven't met a white architect yet that knew who I was talking about if I were to mention that name. And we need to change that. And this is why Phil Freelon nominated Paul Williams for the AIA's highest individual award, the gold medal. It's basically the award that welcomes an architect

into the canon of all time greats. Previous winners include Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Vandero, Luka Bucie and Thomas Jefferson. And now Paul Williams will officially join their ranks 37 years after his death. This award means a lot to Friland and other African-American architects in terms of general visibility. There are very few African-American architects

working in this country, relatively speaking, you know, 2% of the licensed architects in this country are black. And one of the ways you would want to combat that is to raise the visibility and to make sure people know that this is a great profession and that young people see it as a possibility and as an option for them.

And ultimately, this award is about recognizing a master, a recognition that is long overdue. Paul Williams developed the eclectic style of the California home and helped shape the look and feel of Los Angeles just as much as Los Angeles shaped him. A man who could draw magnificent style, upside down, and better than most of his peers. 99% of visible was produced this week by Avery Truffleman, which refused Delaney Hall, Emmett Fitzgerald, and me Roman Mars. Speaking to me, Roman Mars, I'm up for a People's Choice Webby Award for Best Podcast Host,

so please vote for me. I would like to win that. I'll link to it in the show notes. Katie Mingle is our senior editor, Kurt Colstead is the digital director, and Terran Meza is the office manager. The all-original music in this episode was composed by Sean Rial. Special thanks this week to Taylor Hamilton, Bonnie Boswell, and Bradford Grant. We are a project of 91.7 K-A-L-W in San Francisco

and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars on the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Tumblr too. But we released at least two articles about design and architecture every week on our website at 99PI.org. Radio Topeia from PRX.

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