"The five architects - Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, the brothers Charles and Henry Greene, and R.M. Schindler - whose work and lives are presented here were seminal figures in American architecture. As Californians they were less influenced than their Eastern contemporaries by the European styles that prevailed in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, and each of them devised an original style that has had a profound effect on younger generations of American architects."--The inside cover

This classic study of Bernard Maybeck, Irving Gill, Charles and Henry Greene, and R.M. Schindler was first published by Reinhold, then by Praeger, and then by Henry Holt before being allowed to go out to print. The demand for this book has been so great that we have reprinted it. It has been acclaimed by many prominent architects and architectural historians who consider it to be an indispensable volume on 20th-century American architecture.

This fall, East of Borneo will publish the first anthology of Esther McCoy’s landmark writing about Southern California. Esther McCoy (1904-1989) was a keen literary stylist and an ingenious architectural historian who chronicled mid-century modernist design as it was being created. Her 1960 book Five California Architects has long been acknowledged as an indispensable classic. As Reyner Banham observed: “No one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all." Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader (Fall 2011), edited and with an introduction by Susan Morgan, presents an unprecedented selection of McCoy’s work—innovative articles, out-of-print essays, unpublished lectures, and personal memoir—and roundly recognizes this brilliant American original, the pre-eminent voice of West Coast modernism.

Profiles of 25 leading California architects about their rise (and fall, at times). The book includes original portraits as well as stories from each architect about key decisions, philosophies and lessons learned. Also included are renderings and photos of their favorite projects.

Architect Irving J. Gill (18701936) is widely considered the first and preeminent architect of the Modernist era. In her groundbreaking work Five California Architects, Esther McCoy asserts that, along with Bernard Maybeck, Charles and Henry Greene, and R. M. Schindler, Gill is one of Californiaˇs most important architects. This book looks at the life and architectural achievements of Gill, with brilliant photography by Marvin Rand and McCoyˇs insightful text from Five California Architects. Additionally, Gill's own writing (excerpted from The Craftsman (1916))describes his architectural and design philosophy. As one of the most influential architects of the late-nineteenth to early twentieth century, Gill is said to have been so far advanced for his time that there was yet no discussion of ≈modernism The stunning combination of Rand's photographic art and McCoy's writing makes Irving J. Gill an important addition to the library of any serious scholar or fan of Gill, California architecture, Arts and Crafts, modernism, or turn-of-the-century development in building. Marvin Rand gained his photographic education at Los Angeles City College, the U. S. Air Force Photographic School, and Art Center College of Design. He has made a career as an architectural photographer, and his clients have included Charles Eames, Cesar Pelli, Louis Kahn, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Gwathmey/Siegal & Associates, William Pereira & Associates, the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name a few. His photographs have been featured in twenty exhibitions

This inspiring and beautiful book takes the reader on a journey of 35 of the most recent homes designed by Bassenian/Lagoni Architects of Newport Beach, CA. From an Early California home in Coto de Caza to a California Cottage on Balboa Peninsula to an Old World Tuscan Adaptation in Rancho Santa Fe, this colleciton reveals some of the finest examples of what admirings critics are calling The New California Tradition in American Housing.