Viewing page 23 of 30

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

7

EM: Yes, he was.  Yes, he changed.  He went into sort of a FLW romanza period in Texas.

MW: Like the house that looks a little bit like the Barnsdall house.

EM: Yes, true.  Which was what took him to architecture in the first place.

MW: Was he considered a modernist?

EM: No, not really.

MW: He's more like the Bay style?  Or, how can you describe him, or his style?

EM: Well, I think they felt that he was carrying on from the Greene and Greene.

MW: So, regional.

EM: Yes.  However, he did not do these houses of studs and plaster here, and they were always closer to Wright than his houses of wood.  I happen to like the wood houses immensely — the Wyle house is one of my favorites and then of course the Havens house is wonderful.  He did do some wood things in Texas.

MW: So maybe he was unique because he was able to use those different styles.

EM: Yes.

MW: We should talk about his colleagues: Soriano and Ain, and maybe we should start from Ain.  And for me that's something that surprises me that Ain started very young and very active in the 30s.  Was it because of the Depression?

EM: He built less and less after he began teaching.  He enjoyed teaching.

MW: I see.  So he became more like a teacher than an architect.

EM: Yes.

MW: What do you think of Ain and his work?

EM: It's very crisp.  And it's — there's a — I like those 2x4's that are painted white and frame things.  It is so neatly packaged in these ribbons of white painted 2x4's.  He did so much with those, and they became a sort of a design symbol for him, the 4x4, look at the Dunsmuir flats.  Those were all 4x4's.