I have seen far too little of California, which is a shame because the confident freehand of American architecture between the wars reaches its greatest exuberance in the Golden State.
William Gayton began his eponymous Gaytonia Apartments in Long Beach, Ca., in 1929 and they were only midway complete before, as the characteristically colloquial style of Variety put it, Wall Street ‘laid an egg’ with the stock market crash.
This is a deliciously free California Gothic, unbothered by the pretensions of historicist verisimilitude. (A contrast to our still-much-appreciated academic friends on the East Coast.) Indeed, despite its castellar appearance it is mostly constructed of artfully handled stucco on wood disguising itself as stone.
And, true to the apartment house form, there’s even underground parking.
