The sterling architectural examples of later day, residential Los Angeles as designed by Gill, Loos, Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright are not the focus here. Instead we see the early influence of a Middle Western view of what the new city should represent.

We see the famed Gamble House not as it was, but as it was assimilated into the day to day vocabulary of the residential architect. We do not see the sparse lines and volumes of the modernism of Neutra; we see instead stucco and a use of stone that predicts the minimization of detail from a housing industry that must pay dearly for lumber imported from the abundant forests of turn-of-the-century Northern California.

Constructed like established Middle Western neighborhoods, these structures stand against the sparse backdrop of the desert hills and chaparral like the stark cutouts of Ruiter's Cathedrals in the Desert. However, instead of being wrapped and covered with the material nature of a cultural fetish they are of the substance of a wish that eventually came true.

These are the early images of the unlikely desert habitat that to this day is fed water from a few man-made aqueducts that cross the rumbling San Andreas Fault Line. The fact that this entire venture was dependent upon an imported source of such an important natural resource only adds credence and wonder to this fanciful leap of faith that we call Los Angeles.

Kevin Jon Boyle, Curator of Exhibitions