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The bungalow and the automobile: Arthur and Alfred Heineman and the invention of the Milestone Motel

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The bungalow and the automobile: Arthur and Alfred Heineman and the invention of the Milestone Motel

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Content THE BUNGALOW AND THE AUTOMOBILE:
ARTHUR AND ALFRED HEINEMAN
AND THE INVENTION OF THE MILESTONE MOTEL
by
Christine Lazzaretto
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Christine Lazzaretto
ii
Table of Contents
List of Figures iii
Abstract vi
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: The Early Twentieth Century in Southern California 11
Chapter 3: The Bungalow Court 35
Chapter 4: Fred Harvey and the Mission Revival 60
Chapter 5: Automobile Tourism 69
Chapter 6: From Cabin Court to Motor Hotel 77
Chapter 7: Arthur and Alfred Heineman and Life after the Milestone Motel 91
Chapter 8: Conclusion 97
Bibliography 98
iii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Pig ‘n Whistle Restaurant 2
Figure 2: Garland Street Garage 3
Figure 3: Milestone Motel 3
Figure 4: Ostrich Farm, Panama-California Exposition, San Diego 4
Figure 5: Alfred Heineman early design in East Pasadena 17
Figure 6: Alfred Heineman sketches from Ernest Batchelder’s “Studies in 18
Composition Class”
Figure 7: Hindry House 24
Figure 8: Hindry House Fireplace 24
Figure 9: Parsons House 25
Figure 10: Ross House 26
Figure 11: Ross House Interior 27
Figure 12: O’Brien House 28
Figure 13: Freeman House 29
Figure 14: Moiso House from “Distinctive Styles of California Architecture” 30
Figure 15: Gless House 31
Figure 16: Los Robles Court 43
Figure 17: Los Robles Court 43
Figure 18: Bowen Court 45
Figure 19: Bowen Court 46
Figure 20: Bowen Court 46
iv
Figure 21: Bowen Court 47
Figure 22: Hollywood Court 49
Figure 23: Irving Gill, Horatio West Court 52
Figure 24: Irving Gill, Horatio West Court 52
Figure 25: Sawyer Sanatorium, White Oaks Farm, Ohio 53
Figure 26: Mount Parnassus 54
Figure 27: Plan of Mount Parnassus 54
Figure 28: Streamline Moderne Medical Complex 55
Figure 29: Castaneda Hotel 65
Figure 30: Alvarado Hotel, “Indian Building” 66
Figure 31: “Auto Tourist’s Handbook No. 1” 73
Figure 32: Milestone Mo-tel billboard 78
Figure 33: Motel Inn 79
Figure 34: View of Milestone Motel from the highway 80
Figure 35: Rendering of front of Milestone Motel 81
Figure 36: Milestone Motel Plan 82
Figure 37: Rendering of Milestone Motel bungalow with garage 82
Figure 38: Mission Santa Barbara 85
Figure 39: Mission Santa Barbara belltower 85
Figure 40: Milestone Motel tower 85
Figure 41: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005) 88
v
Figure 42: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005) 88
Figure 43: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005) 88
Figure 44: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005) 88
Figure 45: Alfred Heineman, Ten-Ten-Ten Home 93
Figure 46: Alfred Heineman, Interiors, Ten-Ten-Ten Home 93
Figure 47: Alfred Heineman, Design for Hollywood Museum 94
Figure 48: Alfred Heineman, Plan for Los Angeles Public Library 95
vi
Abstract
The confluence of rapid increases in population and the advent of the mass-produced
automobile had a profound impact on the development of Southern California in the
early twentieth century. This study traces the circumstances that lead from the
suburban bungalow, to the bungalow court, to the first motel -- the ultimate
expression of the burgeoning automobile culture. The concept for the motel (or
motor hotel) was developed by Arthur Heineman, who, along with his brother
Alfred, enjoyed a successful architectural practice from 1909 through 1939,
producing over one thousand designs for both residential and commercial buildings
primarily in Los Angeles and Pasadena. Their Milestone Motel, which opened in
1925, was the country’s first motel, and incorporated a variety of influences to
produce a new architecture for the automobile age.
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
Arthur (1878-1972) and Alfred (1882-1974) Heineman were two of six children born
to German immigrant parents who settled in Chicago in 1857. The six Heineman
children were Elizabeth, Walter, Herbert, Ada, Arthur and Alfred.
1
Their father,
Theodore Heineman, founded T.S. Heineman & Associates, a successful medical
manufacturing company which he ran for almost thirty years before the lure of
opportunity in the land of sunshine inspired him to move the family to California.
The firm had an exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, and
Theodore came west shortly after it closed, in January 1894.
Theodore took the train to Los Angeles to invest in a water and land company, and
the rest of the family followed in March of that same year. According to Alfred, the
investment opportunity was a “tenderfoot sucker deal,” but his father’s judgment was
clouded by the beauty of Southern California, so he overlooked the warning signs
and ultimately lost his life savings in the endeavor.
2
True to the spirit of the
Heineman family, however, Theodore was able to eventually recover his losses in
the real estate business.
Arthur and Alfred pursued their own business ventures during their first few years in
Pasadena, but began working together in 1909 as the firm Arthur S. Heineman and
Associates.
3
Although neither brother had any formal architectural training, the
combination of Arthur’s uncanny business sense and Alfred’s gift for design resulted
2
in a successful partnership that would last for almost thirty years.
4
The Heinemans
were able to successfully transition from Arts and Crafts bungalows, to the Revival
Styles prevalent in the 1920s and 30s, to Streamline Moderne toward the end of their
partnership.
In the 1920s, Arthur procured numerous large commissions, and the firm embarked
on their most productive period. Major clients included the prominent Los Angeles
banker, Marco Hellman, for whom they designed several bank branches, as well as a
log cabin in Pacific Palisades in 1922. In addition, they were hired by the Pig-n-
Whistle restaurant chain for a series of designs in Los Angeles and San Francisco
(Figure 1). Other commissions included several new forms of architecture that had
evolved to accommodate the automobile, including garages, automobile showrooms
(Figure 2), and the Milestone Motel (Figure 3). They also participated in the 1915
Panama-California Exposition in San Diego and the Panama Pacific International
Figure 1: Pig ‘n Whistle Restaurant
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
3
Figure 2: Garland Street Garage
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 3: Milestone Motel
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Exposition in San Francisco, showing their whimsical side with a series of buildings
in the amusement park sections (Figure 4).
4
Though a thorough examination of the complete works of this prolific firm is still
absent from architectural history, for this study I will focus on a narrow, but
significant, segment of their oeuvre, and trace the circumstances that lead from the
suburban bungalow, to the bungalow court, to the first motel -- the ultimate
expression of the burgeoning automobile culture. The concept for the motel (or
motor hotel) successfully incorporated numerous influences, including the bungalow
court, California’s nostalgia for the Mission era, as well as the concept of the
Mission system itself, railroad pioneer Fred Harvey’s innovative ideas, and the
primitive cabin camp. Out of this developed a new building typology catering to
California’s growing class of automobile tourist.
Figure 4: Ostrich Farm,
Panama-California
Exposition, San Diego
Source: Greene and Greene
Archives
5
The Heineman family came to Southern California at a unique moment in the
region’s history, when legions of new settlers were moving west and land was cheap,
creating opportunity for savvy investors and speculators like the Heineman brothers.
Out of this period of growth came the birth of the suburban bungalow, and the
Heinemans were among dozens of local architects, builders, and real estate
speculators promoting the bungalow as the ideal single-family home in the land of
opportunity. Their early work was firmly rooted in the rustic Arts and Crafts
movement, which would inform their style until about 1917 when the bungalow had
fallen out of favor. Though their Arts and Crafts-era works were inspired by the
entrepreneurial spirit of the time and not the ideology of some of their fellow
practitioners, the longevity and success of their partnership is a testament to their
talents in both business and architecture.
At the same time that the proponents of the Arts and Crafts were promoting the
return to a simpler time, a new revolution was also beginning to take shape. Arts and
Crafts practitioners in England were generally anti-industrial, which ultimately led to
the movement’s demise as the handcrafted goods they promoted were too expensive
for the common man. In the United States, however, though these ideals were also
prevalent, American architects and other Arts and Crafts enthusiasts welcomed new
technology. The most prominent example is Frank Lloyd Wright, who famously
6
declared in a lecture in 1901 that “In the machine lies the only future of art and
craft.”
5
The connection between the Arts and Crafts movement and industrialization became
inextricably bound when Henry Ford began mass producing the Model T in 1908.
Charles Greene wrote in 1915, “…between the automobile mania and the bungalow
bias, there seems to be a psychic affinity…They have developed side by side at the
same time, and they seem to be the expression of the same need or desire, to be free
from the commonplace of convention.”
6
Other scholars agree with Charles’
observation, giving equal credit to the simple house in the garden and the automobile
for shaping Los Angeles in the early twentieth century.
7
The automobile flourished
even in Pasadena, where outspoken activists like Lummis vigorously promoted a
rugged lifestyle, and in 1915 Pasadena had the world’s highest rate of automobile
ownership.
8
It was in the West that all of the necessary elements came together to create the
suburban ideal, and the impact of the automobile on the development of cities such
as Los Angeles cannot be over-emphasized. The automobile became a mainstay at
the same time that Los Angeles was experiencing its greatest period of growth. In
1900, the population of Los Angeles was still relatively sparse, but by 1930 it had
grown to the fifth largest city in the country.
9
Widespread use of the automobile was
7
initiating rapid changes in other American cities as well, but because Los Angeles
was still so young, its character was almost wholly formed by twentieth century
forces.
10
Older cities typically grew upward, creating a city center near the rail lines,
while cities in Southern California could grow out, as the automobile allowed for the
development of suburban areas away from the crush of the city.
While more established cities were investing in subways and other forms of mass
transit, California was working on a system of roads spanning the state. The first
state highway was planned in 1909 to run along the Pacific Coast, and a few years
later the federal government began encouraging other states to invest in their
roadways by offering financial incentives to states with highway departments. Just
as the railroads stimulated the boom in the 1880s, transcontinental automobile travel
inspired another mass influx of people in the 1920s. Between 1920 and 1930 two
million people came to California, the majority of whom settled in Southern
California, creating the “first great migration of the automobile age.”
11
By the end of
1924, 310,000 cars a day were entering Los Angeles, which was more than the total
number of automobiles in the state of New York.
12
At this point, the automobile was
an integral part of life, city planning, and architecture in Southern California. In less
than thirty years, the automobile had gone from novelty to institution.
8
According to Alfred Heineman, his brother Arthur had a life-long love affair with the
automobile, and owned the second or third automobile in Los Angeles (a Buckboard
with a steering handle).
13
The Heineman firm had numerous clients in Northern
California, and Arthur took many trips up and down the coast by automobile, quickly
tiring of the primitive accommodations for sleeping and eating along the route. As
Alfred put it, Arthur “directed his inventive mind to the problem,”
14
and envisioned a
place that catered to the need of the motorist – located on the outskirts of town with
easy access on and off the highway, but with all the comforts of home, and in 1925,
Arthur opened the first motel in San Luis Obispo.
The advent of the motel was the culmination of forces that had dominated Southern
California for the first two decades of the twentieth century. The motel form was the
apotheosis of the bungalow court that came of age during the Arts and Crafts era,
combining privacy with instant community in a park-like setting. Just as residential
courtyard housing protected its residents from the bustling city outside, the motel
created an “instant community against the rapidity of movement.”
15
Paradoxically,
the format of the court also added to the sense of alienation in the new, fast-paced car
culture that had pervaded California life. After a day of touring, the motorist could
pull right off the freeway – no longer needing to brave the crowded, noisy, and dirty
city to find lodging – and without leaving the car, register for the night and park in a
private garage.
9
Chapter 1 Endnotes
1
The Heineman children were all successful in their own ways. Elizabeth, the oldest lived with her
family in Montana. Her son Leon Theodore Eliel lived in Pasadena for many years, serving as
President of the Pasadena Historical Society. Walter was a businessman who started in his father’s
business before becoming a real estate speculator in Pasadena. Herbert was also in the building/real
estate business. Ada was a teacher, whose credentials are outlined later in these notes.
2
Alfred Heineman, “A Heineman Familey (sic) Calendar” (1971), Greene and Greene Archives,
Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
3
The first person to publish extensively about the work of Alfred and Arthur Heineman was Dr.
Robert Winter, architectural historian and Professor Emeritus of the History of Ideas at Occidental
College. Dr. Winter also knew Alfred Heineman in his later years, providing the unique scholarly
opportunity to discuss the firm’s work, including identifying many of their residential commissions in
Los Angeles, and examine Alfred’s experiences working for his brother first hand. In the early 1970s,
Randell Makinson, then Director of the Gamble House, discovered that Alfred was still living in the
area, and recognized that the Heineman papers should become part of the Greene and Greene
Archives at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. These materials include a series of
sketchbooks, photo albums, newspaper clippings, and a selection of architectural drawings. Dr.
Winter was the first to study these materials, and added his own set of notes, observations, and
communications from the Heineman family to the collection. Dr. Winter’s work and the generosity
with which he has shared his own research on not only the Heineman brothers, but also the
development of the bungalow and Arts and Crafts Movement in general, were instrumental resources
for this study.
4
Although neither brother had any formal architectural training, Arthur became a certified architect in
1910. This was accomplished under California’s 1901 “Law Regulating the Practice of Architecture,”
which stipulated who could use the title of architect and the conditions under which the title could be
obtained. This law was developed in response to the lobbying of professional architects to rectify the
great numbers of speculators and land developers who dominated the field during this period.
Anyone practicing architecture prior to 1901 was automatically granted a certificate, and those who
began working after that date could take an exam. At first Arthur resisted, fearing he would not be
able to pass, but finally he was persuaded, and on November 3, 1910 he was issued certificate number
633. At that time, the individual counties in California collected a $1 fee and stamped the back of the
certificate before work could begin on a project within their borders. Between 1910 and 1927 Arthur
received stamps from nine counties, from San Diego to San Francisco. Robert Morgeneier, “The Law
Regulating the Practice of Architecture in California,” The Architect and Engineer Vol. 26, no. 2
(March 1909), 49-51. The original certificate is part of the Heineman collection at the Greene and
Greene Archives.
5
Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” Lecture to the Chicago chapter of the
Daughters of the American Revolution (1901); later published as “The Art and Craft of the Machine”
in Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture: Selected Writings (1894-1940), Frederick Gutheim, ed. (New
York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941).
6
Charles Sumner Greene, “Impressions of Some Bungalows and Gardens,” The Architect, Vol. 10,
(December, 1915), 252.
10
7
Sam Hall Kaplan, LA Lost and Found: An Architectural History of Los Angeles (New York: Crown,
1987), 53.
8
Ann Scheid, Crown of the Valley (Northridge, CA: Windsor Publications, 1986), 117. Pasadenans
owned automobiles at a rate of one automobile for every four residents, while the national mean was
one for every forty-three.
9
Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 68.
10
Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in
Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 6.
11
Carey McWilliams, An Island on the Land, (Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Press, 1973), 135.
12
Starr, Material Dreams, 79.
13
Alfred Heineman, letter to Robert Winter, May 1, 1972. The fact that Arthur’s car was the second
or third in Los Angeles is also based on family recollection.
14
Alfred Heineman, “Milestone Motel Scrapbook,” Greene and Greene Archives.
15
Starr, Material Dreams, 216.
11
Chapter 2: The Early Twentieth Century in Southern California
In 1915, Walter Woehlke wrote in Sunset Magazine “Southern California a
generation ago was not a garden, it was a sunburnt cattle pasture owned by three or
four dozen families. It was isolated, half Spanish, without railroad connections,
dusty in summer, muddy in winter, a typical part of the Southwestern cow country.”
1
But starting with the first land boom in the 1880s, the face of Southern California
would rapidly change from cow country, to thriving metropolis, to sprawling
suburbia. The phenomenal growth (the population of Los Angeles alone more than
tripled between 1900 and 1910
2
) and the way that Southern California developed can
be traced directly back to advances in transportation -- the railroads, streetcars, and
ultimately the automobile shaped the landscape of Southern California.
Starting with the completion of the Santa Fe Line in 1886, which sparked the
region’s first land boom, the railroads would be a dominant influence on the
landscape of Southern California until the First World War. The Santa Fe continued
to expand their holdings in California until 1896, and the Southern Pacific laid 4,500
miles of rail line to California and within the state between 1887 and 1910.
3
To
increase business on their westward-bound trains, the railroads dramatically lowered
their fares in the late 1880s, including a special $1 fare in from Kansas City to Los
Angeles.
4
Naturally, the railroads also invested heavily in regional promotionalism
to continue the flood of people from the east. These efforts, backed by other
12
California boosters who worked tirelessly to publicize California’s beautiful weather,
healthy climate, and abundant opportunities, brought people to the west in droves.
The proliferation of local rail lines by moguls such as Henry Huntington also enabled
people to settle away from the urban centers and attain the American dream of a
small house and a garden to call their own.
In addition to stimulating the growth of the resident population, turn of the twentieth
century California also enjoyed a booming tourist trade. In 1900, an estimated
60,000 seasonal tourists enjoyed the mild west coast winter; by the turn of the
century traveling to California had become what the grand tour had been for eastern
seaboard residents in previous centuries.
5
Many of these travelers found themselves
in Pasadena, as its proximity to the railroad lines made it a natural destination for
both seasonal tourists and permanent settlers. The early twentieth century ushered in
the grand resort era in Pasadena and other Southern California cities. The first hotel
in Pasadena opened in 1880,
6
soon to be followed by many other small hotels and
boarding houses. These helped pave the way for Pasadena’s grand resort era at the
turn of the twentieth century.
As these seasonal travelers began settling permanently in the West, they brought
with them the architectural traditions of the East and Midwest, and in Pasadena the
wealthiest families built grand estates along Orange Grove Avenue, which became
13
known as “Millionaire’s Row.” The rugged nature of the frontier also attracted a
creative, entrepreneurial, and artistic population which was captivated by the
progressive ideals of California. These rugged individualists rejected the excesses of
Victoriana in the staid city, and instead chose to make their homes on the edge of the
wilderness on the banks of the Arroyo Seco.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the anti-industrial ideals that John Ruskin and
William Morris had promoted in England were taking root in the United States. In
1901, Gustav Stickley began publishing the Craftsman magazine in New York, and
the principles of handcraft, connecting with nature, and the return to a simple life,
which first took hold in the industrialized cities in the East, were embraced in the
West. Stickley advocated not only an artistic revolution, but social change as well.
He believed that good architecture was the democratic right of all Americans, and
could cure many of the problems facing the middle-class family. These philosophies
were seen as an expression of “individualist democracy,” a form of populism in
housing and symbol of the Progressive era in politics.
7
These ideas also held great appeal for the group of artists and artisans who made
their homes along the Arroyo, and in combination with an appreciation for the
indigenous cultures and local materials of the region, shaped the Southern California
adaptation of the Arts and Crafts movement – what would later be termed the Arroyo
14
Culture.
8
The bungalows were also relatively inexpensive to construct, achieving
Stickley’s goal of making home ownership possible for the middle class. Craftsman
architecture meant that Americans of modest means were able “in their abodes and in
their surroundings to give evidence of culture and refinement, to avoid the vulgarity
of crudity on the one hand and the vulgarity of ostentation on the other.”
9
The lead protagonists of the Arroyo Culture were Charles Fletcher Lummis and
George Wharton James, who were also both ardent California boosters. Lummis, in
particular, has become intrinsically tied to the rugged naturalism of the Arts and
Crafts movement. He famously walked from Cincinnati to Los Angeles in 1885 and
became the editor of the Los Angeles Times, a position he held until 1888. He left
the paper after suffering a stroke that has been attributed to stress, and spent three
years in New Mexico recuperating. Lummis spent the rest of his life living in
Southern California working as a fierce advocate for the west, its history, and native
peoples. He built the quintessential naturalist home along the west bank of the
Arroyo between 1898 and 1910. Named El Alisal, it is built of stones that Lummis
collected from the nearby Arroyo. In 1894, Lummis became the editor of the Land
of Sunshine, a promotional pamphlet that became an important progressive
periodical.
15
George Wharton James (1858-1923) settled in Pasadena and, like Lummis, was one
of California’s most prolific writers. His favorite subject was California’s natural
beauty, which he promoted in his seminal book on the topic, California: Romantic
and Beautiful. James succeeded Lummis as the editor of Land of Sunshine in 1912,
which by then was called Out West. James worked as an editor of Craftsman
Magazine in 1904, and also has the distinction of editing the Arroyo Craftsman,
which ran for one issue in 1909.
The Arroyo Craftsman formalized the loose relationship of the craftsmen into the
Arroyo Guild, whose motto “We can” was inspired by Stickley’s “If we can.”
Among the like-minded settlers of the banks of the Arroyo were artists William Lees
Judson (who was also president of the Arroyo Guild), Elmer Wachtel, and Jean
Mannheim; writers Helen Lukens Gaut and Una Hopkins Nixon; and tile maker
Ernest Batchelder. Although the formal Guild was not enduring, their ideals of “the
spiritualization of daily life through an aestheticism tied to crafts and local
materials”
10
had a lasting impact on the art, culture, and architecture in early
twentieth century California.
The Arts and Crafts movement was beginning to gain momentum when Theodore
Heineman moved with his second wife
11
and Alfred from Los Angeles to Pasadena
in 1904, where Arthur and Herbert were already active in real estate. Arthur initially
16
was a land speculator, but soon realized that coupling architecture with real estate
was a more profitable enterprise, and began employing draftsmen to design houses
for his properties. Arthur was a businessman noted not only for his shrewd financial
abilities, but also for his innovative construction ideas and inventive mind. Arthur
financed the firm and was responsible for bringing in clients. He would typically
meet with the clients to assess their needs, and map out the general plan for the
house, which would be executed by one of the draftsmen in his office.
In 1904, Alfred tried his hand in real estate speculation as well, and between 1904
and 1909 he designed and built several modest bungalows in Pasadena, some that he
financed, and others with outside investors. In addition to the speculative houses he
built, Alfred’s designs were published in periodicals such as Ladies Home Journal as
well as in bungalow plan books such as Sweet’s Bungalow Company. Bungalow
companies like Sweet’s provided floor plans, elevations, and often photographs of
bungalow designs that were given away by contractors to prospective clients, usually
without crediting the architect or designer from whom they came. For a small sum,
complete plans based on these designs could be purchased, resulting in thousands of
houses being built from these designs. Alfred’s own recollections, combined with
evidence in the materials in the Greene and Greene Archive, confirm that Alfred’s
designs were indeed among those included in the Sweet’s books. He continued to
sell drawings to the bungalow companies even after joining Arthur’s firm, and we
17
now know that there are Heineman-designed houses across the country, from
Spokane, Washington to Rochester, New York, and many points in between.
12
Late
in his life, Alfred wrote “Haven’t the slightest idea how I learned to do architectural
drafting or how I was able to design exteriors and interiors that some have said were
attractive…”
13
In 1907, Alfred advocated for the implementation of a city nursery
and comprehensive tree plan for the city of Pasadena, which is responsible for the
street-tree plan that is still in effect today.
14
He also worked on a plan for Pasadena’s
Civic Center, which shared many similarities to the Beaux Arts plan that the city
adopted in the early 1920s.
Alfred’s early works were mostly simple one or one and one half story residences,
largely unremarkable but still charming (Figure 5).
15
In 1906, Alfred and his brother
Figure 5: Alfred Heineman early design in East Pasadena
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
18
Herbert opened their own firm, called the Heineman and Heineman Realty
Company. Announcing this new venture, the Pasadena Daily News wrote:
Alfred Heineman…, who will manage the Building Department, is
well known in Pasadena for his artistically designed houses and
bungalows. The term ‘The Beautiful Bungalow’ has been
appropriately applied to his houses by the local real estate dealers, and
the rapidity with which the homes designed and built by Mr. Heineman
have sold, has led to the saying among agents -- A Heineman house is
sold before it is built.
16
Even in these early works Alfred showed himself to have a gift for design.
Although, like his brother, he never had any formal architectural training, Alfred did
participate in Ernest Batchelder’s “Studies in Composition” course at the Throop
Polytechnic School between 1908 and 1909, which helped to nurture his creativity
(Figure 6).
17
The Throop Polytechnic Institute was founded in 1891 by Amos
Throop, a retired businessman from Chicago. Throop believed in the “development
of the total person,” and instituted a curriculum of manual training to complement
the academic subjects.
18
Figure 6: Alfred Heineman sketches from Ernest
Batchelder’s “Studies in Composition” Class
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
19
Ernest Batchelder (1875–1957) joined the Institute’s staff in 1902, and taught his
students the principles of William Morris (1834-1896) and the importance of
Japanese and Native American designs, which Batchelder outlined in his 1908 work
Principles of Design.
19
Shortly after Alfred took his class, Batchelder left Throop
and started his own school and studio at his home on the east bank of the Arroyo
Seco, where he also made the tiles for which he would become famous. Alfred was
grateful for the opportunity to study with Batchelder, and honored his teacher by
incorporating Batchelder tiles into his residential designs.
20
The Heineman family was also acquainted with Charles Lummis, who appears to
have exerted his influence on Alfred. In 1900, Lummis arranged for Alfred to visit
New Mexico to spend time on a remote cattle ranch.
21
During the trip Alfred
“learned to ride a horse and had a 30-30 rifle and owned two steers and a registered
Brand.”
22
Lummis was an avid promoter of the Southwest and believed in the
restorative powers of New Mexico, as well as the importance of studying the
indigenous peoples. The exact purpose of the trip, along with the circumstances
surrounding it, are unclear, but it is noteworthy that Alfred (and by extension Arthur)
was influenced by one of the leading proponents of the West Coast Arts and Crafts
movement. Lummis’ fascination and promotion of the missions also may have had
an impact on Alfred, who included a photo album containing images of California’s
20
missions with his donation to the Greene and Greene Archives, and throughout his
long career returned to the motifs of the Mission Revival for inspiration.
After several years of developing projects on their own, around 1909 Alfred was
invited by Arthur to join his firm.
23
Though still relying on a series of young
draftsmen to carry out his designs, it was at this time that Arthur had started to
receive grander commissions and may have decided that he needed to bring in more
sophisticated artistic talent.
24
At the beginning of their partnership Alfred was the
only draftsman, but during the 1920s as many as eighteen were employed by the
Heineman firm. In addition to designing Alfred also supervised construction. Alfred
wrote of the early days of the firm:
This was the bungalow period in Southern California (one story
residences) and the ‘freedom of construction’ created a new more
livable plan and attractive freedom of appearance. ‘Freedom of
construction’ was no deep foundation against frost, no insulated walls
and roof against cold, no steep roofs against snow, and because air
conditioning had not arrived, wide overhanging roof eaves and
extensive front porches. We soon created our own style which
attracted attention. I assume we designed at least 300 bungalows…
25
The California bungalow was a simple, garden-oriented house uniquely suited for the
climate and lifestyle of the region. While the bungalow was adopted by the
Heinemans as a result of circumstance, other practitioners embraced its philosophical
ideals: “The use of this woodsy Craftsman style was no simple coincidence of time
and fortune. It has an ideological, even moral significance. On one level the
21
material and fusion of the styles indicate a feeling for the environment of the Arroyo,
an attempt to associate well known picturesque human contrivances with the
picturesque natural landscape.”
26
The California bungalow also embraced elements
from the region’s Spanish-Mexican heritage, as well as the importance of connecting
with the outdoors. In addition to these regional influences, designers and builders
adapted Japanese and Swiss building techniques, particularly their emphasis on wood
above all other materials.
The term bungalow typically refers to a modest, one or one and a half story house
with an informal floor plan. The Victorian entry hall and formal parlor were
replaced with an open plan, welcoming guests directly into the cozy living room
from the spacious front porch. These small-scale dwellings forced architects to
maximize living spaces through a variety of convenient devices. Galley kitchens
were frequent features, as were built-in furniture, and cleverly tucked-away linen
closets and disappearing beds. Kitchens were carefully laid out to create a suitable
work environment, and featured new advances in appliances and other labor-saving
devices. To the Progressives these improvements signaled advancements for women
rights, and freedom from household drudgery.
27
The humorous “Bungle-ode,” published in The Architect and Engineer of California
in 1918, describes life in the small house:
22
Look out! Don’t open the door too wide – ‘twill crash into the Mission
rocker. And if the rocker starts rocking, ‘twill smash the leaded glass
of the book-case doors.
You are curious as to the meaning of that lowered ceiling-beam
occurring midway between the front door and the kitchen. Ho! Ho!
Surely you are from the far, far East – mayhap from Massachusetts.
Listen. That particular beam is the dividing line between this and that,
‘this’ being the living-room and ‘that’ being the dining room.
Follow the path into the kitchen. Careful. Don’t bump your shins on
that seat-end. Oh, I nearly forgot – that built-in seat conceals the head-
end of a perambulating bed. The feet-end projects into the bedroom
closet.
28
The author concludes his ode by confessing that despite its shortcomings, he, too,
had been swept up in bungalow fever and was now residing in one himself. Arthur
Heineman responded to this with his own humorous account in “The Periodic
Cottage – A Foil for the Bungle-Ode,” which was published the following month.
Arthur showed another side of his serious personality in his article, describing the
“deleted eyebrow” placed over the front door but “arranged to shed not even a tear,”
and the division of the interior spaces “so that you are constantly reminded that the
architect had a tape line – and used it.”
29
Natural materials were important to the design aesthetic, with oak floors, exposed
ceiling beams, and brick or stone fireplaces featuring prominently. The exteriors
were generally simple, to fit with the rugged lifestyle of the inhabitants. Wide,
overhanging eaves emphasized the horizontality of the small bungalow, and were
23
practical in shading the house from the hot California sun. Brick or arroyo stone
foundations supported the wood frames, which were clad either in wood shingles or
stucco, and heavy supports define the deeply recessed front porch.
The California bungalow was also influenced by regionalism, seen in the selection of
local materials for their construction, with courtyards, gardens, and sleeping porches
meant to connect the interior with the natural surroundings, and often decorated with
Native American pottery, rugs, and blankets, and with simple, handcrafted
furnishings. In addition, while the British Arts and Crafts movement was steeped in
the romanticism of the Middle Ages, in California proponents idealized the Mission
era as the epitome of the pre-industrial era. The proliferation of the bungalow and its
representation as an attainable form of single family housing also became the most
potent symbol of the democratization of art.
30
By 1930, Los Angeles had more
single-family houses than any other major city, with ninety-four percent of the
population living the American dream of owning their own home,
31
due in large part
to the development of the bungalow.
The first house that Alfred and Arthur worked on together was the 1909 Hindry
House, which combined the local aesthetic with the nostalgic Mission Revival
(Figure 7). W.E. Hindry was a mining engineer, and he hired the Heinemans to build
his family home in Pasadena’s latest residential subdivision, Prospect Park. This
24
was the largest commission Arthur had received to date, and may have been the
motivation for bringing his more creative brother into the firm.
32
The Hindry House
has a Spanish tile roof, and expansive porches and terraces connecting to the
outdoors. The entryway is dominated by a massive fireplace (Figure 8),
33
which is
constructed of stones brought from the nearby Arroyo via horse-drawn carts.
34
Other
notable decorative features include stained and leaded glass windows, hammered
copper fixtures, linen wall coverings, and Grueby tile fireplaces in the dining room
and living room.
35
The press was exuberant in its praise for the Hindry House,
declaring its seventeen rooms, five porches, terraces and pergolas the “most
elaborate residence in Prospect Park.”
36
Figure 7: Hindry House
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 8: Hindry House Fireplace
Source: Greene and Greene
Archives
25
While the Hindry House represents one of the firm’s most elaborate commissions,
one of their best examples of the rugged Craftsman aesthetic is the 1910 Parsons
House, a seven-room bungalow built for the relatively modest sum of $5,000 (Figure
9).
37
The exterior is dominated by a massive stone chimney and porch pillars, which,
like the Hindry House, are composed of rocks gathered from the nearby Arroyo
Seco. The dining room includes a stained glass window designed by Alfred that was
fabricated by Judson Studios.
Though there were many important contributors to the Arts and Crafts movement, it
is impossible to discuss the architecture of Pasadena during that era without noting
the work of Charles and Henry Greene. The Greene brothers came to Pasadena from
apprenticeships in Boston in 1893, and took the simple California bungalow to the
Figure 9: Parsons House
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
26
level of high art, with Pasadena’s 1907 Blacker House and 1908 Gamble House as
the definitive examples of their design aesthetic. The Blacker House, located in
Pasadena’s exclusive Oak Knoll neighborhood, was built for $100,000, and the
12,000 square foot residence is a masterful example of Greene and Greene’s
harmonious relationship between the house and garden. A 1912 Craftsman
Magazine article praised Greene and Greene for their unique design abilities: “…so
ample has been the range of the architects’ imagination, and so diverse the treatment
in each particular case, that one feels each house possesses a definite personality of
its own, a certain uniqueness both of idea and expression.”
38
While Alfred and Arthur Heineman never had a commission on the scale of the
Blacker House, it is noteworthy that their skills were recognized by an upscale
Figure 10: Ross House
Source: Author’s photograph
27
clientele, and the firm has several important commissions in Oak Knoll
neighborhood that approach the high art of Greene and Greene. The first of these is
the 1911 Ross House on Elliott Drive, which illustrates Alfred’s interpretation of
Swiss and Japanese design, particularly in the elaborate truss work on the front porch
and the extensive use of wood on the interior (Figure 10). The Heinemans also used
an Oriental lift in the window sashes that was a favored design element of the Greene
brothers, whose work must have been influential to them during this period, although
late in his life Alfred had little recollection of Charles or Henry Greene.
39
The living
room features an inglenook with a Batchelder tile fireplace with a floral motif. Other
decorative features in the inglenook include two leaded glass windows, and a plein
air painting spanning the horizontal space above the fireplace. Both the windows
and the painting are attributed to Alfred (Figure 11).
40
Figure 11: Ross House
Source: Author’s photograph
28
In 1912 the brothers were hired to build a speculative house for William O’Brien,
with a construction cost set at $13,000.
41
The O’Brien House is an excellent
example of Alfred’s design aesthetic, as it exhibits several characteristics that would
become signatures of his style. The exterior exhibits Alfred’s interpretation of
Japanese design, but with the rolled eaves that the firm would use on many
subsequent commissions. The living room, like the Ross House, is notable for the
inglenook with Batchelder fireplace and leaded glass windows. The rooms are laid
out on a diagonal, in order to fit the unusually-shaped site, although the use of
diagonals was used in later Heineman houses as a design technique, not as a solution
to space limitations (Figure 12).
Figure 12: O’Brien House
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
29
Probably the firm’s most notable residential commission in Pasadena, and their third
residence in the Oak Knoll neighborhood, is the 1912 Freeman House (Figure 13).
42
The Freeman House also displays several signature characteristics, including an
irregularly patterned shingle roof with rolled eaves, meant to suggest the thatched
roof of an English cottage,
43
and wide gables gracefully crowning the strong
horizontal massing. The work of Ernest Batchelder is also generously represented
here, decorating three chimneys and four fireplaces. The construction cost was
$23,000, and the total area of the main house and guest cottage exceed 11,000 square
feet (the living room alone is an impressive 1,500 square feet), and originally was
sited on a two and a half acre estate. This house had suffered over thirty years of
neglect, damage, and inappropriate remodels before an exhaustive four-year
rehabilitation project was undertaken by the current owners.
Figure 13: Freeman House
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
30
Figure 14: Moiso House from “Distinctive Styles of California Architecture”
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 15: Gless House
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
During the second decade of the twentieth century, the firm was also busy with
numerous commissions in Los Angeles. 1911 in particular was a busy year, with
work on houses for the Adams, Galbreth, Moiso, and Mitchell families commencing
throughout the city. These works share similar details to the houses the firm was
building in Pasadena, and also helped further the firm’s reputation with articles in
publications such as Southwest Builder and Contractor, which included the Moiso
House in their “Distinctive Styles of California Architecture” feature (Figure 14).
31
The Mitchell House also appeared in Southwest Builder and Contractor, in an article
entitled “Artistic Interiors of Moderate Cost Residences.” The 1913 Gless House, in
Los Angeles’ Wilshire District, is a superlative example of the firm’s work (Figure
15). At a cost of $30,000, the largest budget the brother’s would receive for a
residential commission, the house is Alfred’s interpretation of the English Tudor
half-timber style, adapted for California.
44
Alfred also explored his interest in
horticulture, designing Japanese gardens for both the Moiso and Gless houses.
Though just a small sampling of the firm’s Craftsman-era designs, these examples
represent some of their best work, and are important to understand the quality and
nature of their designs. There were many architects and builders in Pasadena who
were inspired by the work of Charles and Henry Greene, but for the Heinemans to
take that inspiration and infuse it with their own stylistic elements make them unique
among their contemporaries.
32
Chapter 2 Endnotes
1
Walter Woehlke, “The Land of Sunny Homes: A Survey of Economic Conditions and Causes in
Southern California, the Suburban Garden of the Far West,” Sunset Magazine (1915). Walter
Woehlke was a naturalist and Native American rights activist. He served as Assistant to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury and worked for Native
American rights. He also was a frequent contributor to Sunset Magazine.
2
George Wharton James, California: Romantic and Beautiful (Boston: The Colonial Press, 1914),
268. According to the federal census, the population of Los Angeles was 102,479 in 1900 and
319,198 in 1910.
3
Karen Weitze, California’s Mission Revival (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1984), 84.
4
Paul Gleye, The Architecture of Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Rosebud Books, 1981), 49.
5
Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine
Smith Press, 1973), 130.
6
The first hotel was the Lake Vineyard House on the east side of South Marengo. Thomas D.
Carpenter, Pasadena: Resort Hotels and Paradise (Pasadena: Castle Green Press, 1984), 7.
7
Anthony King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 152.
8
Robert Winter coined the term “Arroyo Culture” to refer to this loosely-defined group of craftsman
and artisans. Robert Winter, “The Arroyo Culture,” in California Design 1910, Tim Andersen and
Eudorah Moore, ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith, Inc., 1974), 11.
9
“Round about Los Angeles,” The Architectural Record, 24 (1908), 431.
10
Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985), 111.
11
Gertrude Heineman was tragically killed in a streetcar accident in 1899, and Theodore married
Charlotte in 1904.
12
The connection between the bungalow books and Alfred Heineman was discovered by Dr. Winter
and published in his The California Bungalow in 1980.
13
Alfred Heineman, “A Heineman Familey (sic) Calendar,” Greene and Greene Archives.
14
“Heineman Elaborates Plan for Tree Planting,” Pasadena Daily News (November 23, 1907).
15
Several still stand in northwest Pasadena, including two small speculative houses that were
financed by a Miss J. August Senter (925 and 935 Worcester), 950, 966, and 1116 North Marengo,
1240 Summit, and 540 West California.
16
“New Realty Company in the Field,” Pasadena Daily News (September 19, 1906), 12.
33
17
Alfred Heineman, “Just Because I Enjoy Drawing,” Greene and Greene Archives.
18
Janet Ferrari, “Throop University,” in California Design 1910, 60.
19
Winter, “The Arroyo Culture,” 23.
20
Alfred Heineman, notation in scrapbook at the Greene and Greene Archives.
21
Heineman, “A Heineman Familey (sic) Calendar.”
22
Heineman, “A Heineman Familey (sic) Calendar.”
23
Heineman, notation in scrapbook at the Greene and Greene Archives.
24
Robert Winter, “Alfred and Arthur Heineman,” in Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts and
Crafts Architects of California, Robert Winter, ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1997), 140.
25
Alfred Heineman, “Bungalow Scrapbook,” Greene and Greene Archives.
26
Winter, “The Arroyo Culture,” 14.
27
Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 1981), 170.
28
Ern. Freese, “A Bungle-Ode,” The Architect and Engineer of California (March 1918).
29
Arthur Heineman responded with his own take on small-scale housing with “The Periodiotic
Cottage-A Foil for the Bungle-Ode,” which was published the following month.
30
Elizabeth Cumming, and Wendy Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Movement (New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1991), 123.
31
King, The Bungalow, 142.
32
In a 1971 conversation with Dr. Winter (which is documented in Dr. Winter’s notes which have
also become part of the Heineman collection in the Greene and Greene Archives), Alfred confirmed
that several design elements of the Hindry House were his work, but that the overall design was
Arthur’s. He has also stated that he joined Arthur’s firm in 1910, although we know that permits for
the Hindry House were issued in 1909.
33
There is some conjecture that Charles Greene was involved in early designs for this house, and that
the arroyo stone fireplace and foundation are his work. The current owners believe there is a sketch
of a fireplace by Charles Greene that is similar in design to this one, but there is no evidence to
support this theory.
34
This information was gathered from the current owner, Marka Hibbs, who recalls a neighbor who
participated in the rock gathering as a teenager.
34
35
Although the Heinemans did not design all of the furnishings for their clients, they did design light
fixtures and leaded glass windows (which were often fabricated at Judson Studios in Los Angeles).
The Grueby Faience company, based in Boston, starting producing tiles and art pottery in 1897.
36
“New $60,000 Home,” Pasadena Daily News (December 4, 1909).
37
The Parsons House was originally located at 444 East California Boulevard, in the heart of
Pasadena. In the early 1980s it was threatened with demolition to make way for a condominium
development, and was eventually moved to Altadena, where it was meticulously restored by
restoration architect Tim Andersen. Mr. Andersen’s account of the restoration is available in the
article “Twenty Years Later: Revisiting the Heinemans’ Finest Bungalow,” American Bungalow
(Spring 2000), 22-29.
38
Craftsman Magazine (1912).
39
1971 conversation between Alfred Heineman and Dr. Winter.
40
The plein air painting was recently uncovered by the current owners of the Ross House, who
undertook a rehabilitation of the house in 2003 and discovered that the painting had been hidden
beneath a wood panel.
41
According to Pasadena City Directories, William O’Brien did sell the house shortly after its
completion. It is, however, listed as his residence in the 1915 directory, so the O’Brien family did
occupy the house for a period, even though it was not specifically designed for them.
42
The building permit for the O’Brien House was issued in June of 1912, and the Freeman House in
August. The same contractor, Charles E. Overton, worked on both properties.
43
Alfred stated to Dr. Winter that the rolled eave was one of Arthur’s ideas.
44
“Notable Addition Made to Beautiful Homes in Wilshire District,” Los Angeles Times (1913).
35
Chapter 3: The Bungalow Court
The Arts and Crafts bungalow also lead to an innovative solution for higher density
housing for Southern California’s growing middle class with the emergence of the
bungalow court. Despite the proliferation of the bungalow and the growth of
suburbia -- the permanent population of Southern California nearly doubled in every
decade from 1880 to 1930
1
-- there was still a shortage of housing for the middle
class. A solution was found in the bungalow court, which was generated “in
response to ideal as well as pragmatic demands about the nature of the house,
housing, and the city.”
2
The courtyard house grew directly out of the California bungalow tradition -- a
regionally suitable, moderately priced, and carefully designed domestic architecture.
According to a study of bungalow courts undertaken by the City of Pasadena, there
were four hundred and fourteen courts constructed there between 1909 and 1933,
which could accommodate over 6,500 residents.
3
The bungalow court was a unique
compromise for high density housing, bringing together the amenities of privacy and
open space usually reserved for single-family living with the convenience of an
apartment. With front porches and common areas encouraging mingling among the
residents, bungalow courts also helped provide new residents with a sense of identity
and place.
36
The first bungalow courts sprang up in response to the influx of early twentieth
century visitors who had either tired of the resort hotels, wanted more affordable
accommodations, or were looking for a home-like environment in which to spend the
winter months. There was a precedent for small cabins organized around a courtyard
in some of the resort communities in the east, which may have inspired the bungalow
court on the west coast.
4
The concept was successfully translated into a low-cost
solution for the rapidly growing city.
The bungalow court also grew out of California’s native architecture, drawing from
the layout and spatial organization of both the missions and the ranchos. Both the
mission and the rancho were organized around a central courtyard, with open arcades
and verandas facing onto the communal space. The rancho form was used
extensively by Craftsman architects in designs for single-family residences, making
for a natural progression into bungalow courts. Charles and Henry Greene’s Bandini
House of 1903, which included a U-shaped plan around a central courtyard, was an
early twentieth-century example, but the rancho form was taken up by many
architects of the period, and was a favored design by Arthur and Alfred Heineman.
5
Bungalow courts generally consisted of a grouping of individual houses on one or
two parcels, typically in a U- or L-shaped configuration around a central, landscaped
courtyard bisected by a walkway. Accommodations for deliveries, and later
37
automobile traffic, were usually restricted to the periphery, creating an urban garden
setting that shielded residents from the bustling city and created a sense of
community. Common spaces and shared facilities, such as laundry rooms and
teahouses, suggest a utopian, communal philosophy. Even today, bungalow court
residents often find themselves living among kindred spirits -- for example,
Pasadena’s Reinway Court (designed by Charles Buchanan and Leon Brockway in
1916) has become home to many artists and like-minded residents who relish the
sense of community, and the turn-over rate here is low.
Ideologically, the Progressives championed the bungalow court as an answer to the
dire living conditions of the working poor. In the nineteenth century, crude house
courts had sprung up to house the region’s impoverished immigrant population.
These courts were quickly constructed shanty towns tantamount to “horizontal
tenements.” In 1913 there were 630 such house courts with an alarming 10,000
residents, which comprised a large segment of the city’s working class.
6
The Los
Angeles Housing Commission undertook a study of these worker courts between
1906 and 1908, and found the problem unique to Los Angeles, and “deadly to health
and morals.”
7
Though similar in concept to this worker housing, the charm of the bungalow court,
with its rational, thought-out designs, higher construction standards, and emphasis on
38
the garden, lacked any resemblance to the tenement conditions experienced by house
court residents.
8
Typical working class housing did not include amenities such as
privacy and open, green space, so the bungalow court form became the ideal to
reformers for worker and middle class housing, influencing the development of
multi-family housing in Pasadena and the larger Los Angeles area. It was also
promoted to the industrial cities in the East and Midwest as a solution to the
wretched tenement conditions experienced by their working classes. Additionally,
unlike most multi-family housing in the United States, there was no stigma attached
to living in them and there was no outward sign of class or social status.
9
Not only was the bungalow court seen as a solution for low-cost housing, but
feminists also championed the courtyard model as the ideal housing type for the
domestic revolution. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, along with contemporaries such as
Ebenezer Howard, advocated communal living arrangements with shared kitchens,
laundries, and public childcare facilities, to help ease the housewife’s heavy burden.
These ideas took root in the first quarter of the twentieth century in London, New
York and Los Angeles.
10
Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow featured
cooperative living units that were promoted as ideal housing for single women and
seniors, and his 1909 housing project at Homesgarth (“cooperative quadrangles”)
included individual units that were completely devoid of kitchen facilities.
11
39
Although none of the architects in Southern California took these ideas as far as
Gilman and Howard, many bungalow court designers shared their ideals. Bungalow
courts typically included community spaces such as the shared central courtyard,
playhouses, and garages, and they were embraced as a step toward the utopian vision
of Gilman and her contemporaries. The bungalow court was championed as the best
in modern living, demonstrating the progressive side of home life to women.
12
Bungalow courts were also promoted to independent single women – either traveling
or needing a home to rent – as the ideal living situation. In October, 1921, Keith’s
Magazine on Home Building included an article on bungalow courts, which
enumerated the reasons why it is the perfect housing type for women:
In a court, women feel they may dwell in safety- at little expense, with
more privacy than may be had in a hotel, and with more light and air
than can be had in a small apartment. They prepare their own meals,
keep their own hours, and come and go on sightseeing tours without an
accumulation of board bills, and without consulting anyone.
13
The first true bungalow court was designed by Pasadena architect Sylvanus Marston,
who began working on St. Francis Court for local real estate developer Frank Hogan
in 1908.
14
The project was completed in 1910, and advertised in the Tournament of
Roses brochure as the perfect retreat for visitors coming to enjoy the Rose parade
and other festivities. St. Francis Court was intended for this wealthy tourist clientele,
and as a result the bungalows were elegantly designed, both on the interior and the
exterior, and were more refined than many later courts. It was spacious enough to be
bisected by a central drive, intended for automobile traffic. This was an unusual
40
feature in early courts, as these typically kept the central thoroughfare free for
pedestrian use, and relegated the automobile to the perimeter. St. Francis court
received widespread publicity, and, true to the speculative nature of the era, the
courtyard concept was quickly taken up by other local developers and architects, like
the Heinemans, who would become proponents and significant contributors to the
genre.
The low cost of land, coupled with the relatively inexpensive construction expenses
for the small bungalows, made courts an attractive venture for even smaller-scale
developers. A plan for a bungalow court that promised “…an income for life for
you” appeared in the 1912 edition of Sweet’s Bungalows. There were also numerous
newspaper articles proclaiming the popularity of the bungalow court as an
investment, including a 1915 Los Angeles Times piece stating: “That the popularity
of the bungalow court as a form of investment is increasing in Los Angeles is
revealed in the large number of projects of this character that have been announced
within the past few weeks.”
15
The Keith’s Homebuilding reporter concurred that
“These courts, crowded full of miniature houses, completely, often expensively
furnished, are to be had for a week, month or season, or, occasionally a whole year at
comparatively small expense, while netting the property owner a neat profit on the
amount of ground and building costs, as they are always inexpensively
constructed.”
16
41
Bungalow courts were also advertised as financial opportunities for women
investors. Single women were among the earliest permanent residents in the
bungalow courts, and in 1913 the Ladies Home Journal described bungalow courts
as the ideal place for women who were “unable or unwilling to invest in a single-
family home but who may not like a large, impersonal apartment building either…In
California, the court apartment has solved the problem in a practical and economical
way.”
17
In 1923, a Los Angeles Times reporter credited as Miss John D wrote
“Getting on Easy Street: How a Girl on a Small Salary Bought a Bungalow Court
and Became a Capitalist.” In her first person account, the writer encouraged women
to look out for their financial independence:
And, it’s a pretty good idea to keep the little home you have earned in
your own name after you marry. You may happen to love and marry a
reckless investor and if he undertakes too many business hazards,
you’re sure of your roof. Also, if divorce clouds float your way, you
have some provision for the future. And if you don’t marry, the home
is a security for old age.
18
In 1931 the Los Angeles Times continued this theme in the article “A Great Little
Business: A Girl’s Adventures as Landlady of a Bungalow Court.”
19
This is a more
humorous piece detailing the misadventures of the author as a landlady, but the
underlying message remained that bungalow court ownership was an appropriate and
available source of income and independence for women.
42
There were also bungalow court detractors, particularly as their popularity began to
spread. Primary among them was Charles Greene, who felt that these inexpensive,
quickly constructed cottages were an abomination of the Craftsman ideal of high
quality craftsmanship. He also objected to the crass commercial nature of the
enterprise, and in a searing criticism wrote:
…the speculator and designer seem to have been the same mind or the
same person. [The bungalow court] would seem to have no other
reason for being than that of making money for the investor. The style
and design of each unit is uniform, making for the monotony and
dreariness of a factory district. Added to this, the buildings are
hopelessly crowded. This is a good example of what not to do.
20
Charles also disparaged the lack of input from the residents in such ventures, as the
Greenes felt that in order for architecture to succeed the owners must know what
they want and be able to communicate that to the architects.
21
Coming from Charles
Greene, this seems an unfair criticism, as by this time the Greene brothers were
working for a wealthy clientele that afforded them the freedom and luxury not
available to the working or middle classes. Four bungalow courts could be built that
would house over forty families for the cost of Greene and Greene’s Gamble House,
for example, which was completed around the time Marston began work on St.
Francis Court.
22
Despite Charles’ misgivings, the catalogue for the seminal
California Design 1910 exhibition argues that in retrospect the concept of courts
“seems as much an extrapolation of the Craftsman ethic as the tenderly detailed and
43
precious explorations of wood now grown to the class of luxurious and unattainable
works of art.”
23
An astute businessman not bothered by Charles Greene’s distaste for the commercial
enterprise, Arthur Heineman immediately recognized the potential of courtyard
housing, and he quickly began to look for investors for courtyard projects. Although
not the originators of the concept, Arthur Heineman would become one of the
leading proponents of this innovative housing type, and the firm would go on to
design more bungalow courts than any other local architects.
24
Bungalow courts
would play a central role in the firm’s work for the next twenty years, ultimately
developing into new applications for the changing needs of the city.
25
In July of 1910, Arthur S. Heineman and Associates embarked on their first
bungalow court project, Los Robles Court, for developer Richard Davis (Figure 16-
Figure 16-17: Los Robles Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
44
17). Construction on Los Robles Court began shortly after Marston began St.
Francis Court,
26
and was also intended as seasonal housing for Pasadena’s tourist
trade. For a total construction cost of $17,000, the brothers designed fourteen
bungalows, each containing from three to seven rooms with baths and “patented
beds,” along with a common laundry and drying yard for the residents.
27
Los Robles Court was such a successful venture for Mr. Davis that in 1914 he hired
the Heinemans to design a second court on the neighboring lot. Alexandria Court, a
U-shaped configuration with a two-story residence at the rear, featured a central
heating unit for the bungalows, in addition to other similar amenities to those
provided at Los Robles Court. Stylistically, these bungalows are Italianate, in
contrast to the Swiss chalet bungalows of Los Robles Court. Alexandria Court was
featured in a 1918 advertisement as “complete little homes that are attractively
furnished, all steam heated and with the convenience that high class people
desire…containing living room, dining room, two bedrooms, kitchen and bath, all
ready to hang up your hat and call the tradesman, garages nearby to take care of your
car.”
28
In September of 1910, a permit was issued for what would be the Heinemans’ finest
and most elaborate bungalow court, originally called Garden Village Court and now
known as Bowen Court (Figure 18). Bowen Court was the first of the bungalow
45
courts intended for affordable housing for permanent residents, in contrast to its
predecessors that were constructed for tourist clientele. For a construction cost of
$41,350, twenty-three bungalows comprising thirty-six individual residences were
built (there are twelve individual bungalows and eleven double units). This meant
that the average construction cost for each residence $1,253, compared to $2,300 for
the units at Gartz Court (designed in 1910 by the architectural firm of Myron Hunt &
Elmer Grey), and $3,000 for Marston’s St. Francis Court.
Bowen Court is in an L-shaped configuration, with a double row of bungalows along
the north-south axis with a courtyard through the center, and a single row spanning
the property from east to west (Figure 19). Close attention was given to the siting of
the individual bungalows, to maximize the privacy of the residents by ensuring that
Figure 18: Bowen Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
46
the porch of one bungalow does not look directly into its neighbor. Architect Louis
du Puget Millar, writing about Bowen Court in 1916, remarked “It can be readily
understood that to plan this number of houses, and place them so that each house
should have a certain amount of privacy required skillful planning; and this, it can be
seen, has been cleverly accomplished by Mr. Heineman.”
29
Figure 19: Bowen Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 20: Bowen Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
47
The most significant element, and the unifying feature, is the design of the courtyard
itself. The courtyard was strictly for pedestrian use, while car access was tucked
away on the adjacent street. The communal nature of Bowen Court is achieved
through the close proximity of the bungalows, the central promenade, the shared
laundry and sewing rooms, and the centrally-located teahouse/playhouse (Figure 20).
The rustic, two-story teahouse is constructed of eucalyptus logs and originally with a
eucalyptus tree growing through its center.
Although the Heinemans did not design the kitchen-free bungalows advocated by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and other activists, these collective spaces dedicated to
domestic tasks are a nod toward the socialization of housework and childcare. In
addition, eleven double units (which were likely designed to accommodate more
residences on the site) were promoted as ideal for “two or more persons who may
wish to live under the same roof but desire separate establishments.”
30
Gilman,
among others, had written about the advantages of married couples occupying
separate living arrangements, and it is interesting to note that scholarship about
domestic spaces credit the Heinemans as the first to build such accommodations.
31
Particular attention was given to the elaborate landscaping plan, designed by Alfred.
Lush tropical plants and trees are in abundance in the central courtyard, and each
individual bungalow has its own small garden space. Alfred also designed a
48
Japanese garden, complete with koi pond, for the turn of the L; unfortunately the
pond was later sacrificed to create additional parking. The clinker brick and stone
wall that creates a physical barrier around Bowen Court helps to emphasize the
transition from the public realm into private oasis. (Unfortunately, today the oasis is
entered through an unsightly metal security gate, but the original brick piers remain.)
Architecturally, the bungalows of Bowen Court exemplify the qualities of simplicity,
relationship to nature, and rusticity that were typical of Pasadena’s Arts and Crafts
culture (Figure 21). Although there are slight variations found in each house, they
all share common features such as low gabled roofs with wide, overhanging eaves,
window boxes, and prominent front porches that were not only a design element but
underscore the feeling of community in the courtyard. The foundations vary
Figure 21: Bowen Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
49
between brick, clinker brick, and arroyo stone, which stress the connection with
nature and the local environment. Though not all courtyards aspired to such high
standards, the careful attention to detail in the plan and the design, all accomplished
for a modest sum, make Bowen Court one of the best examples of the courtyard form
for low-cost housing.
In addition to these three courts in Pasadena, the Heinemans designed bungalow
courts for sites in Los Angeles and Hollywood. In January of 1911, the Los Angeles
Times reported that they had been hired by Mrs. W. S. Crane to design a bungalow
court on Santa Barbara Avenue near Vermont.
32
There would be eight individual
bungalows comprising a total of twelve rental units constructed for $20,000, each
with three rooms, handsomely furnished and with built-in fixtures. A central
walkway unites the bungalows, whose unique designs were unified by their screened
porches. They designed at least three other residential courts in Hollywood and Los
Angeles -- Manor Court, Hollywood Court (Figure 22), and Ivan Court.
Figure 22: Hollywood Court
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
50
While the Heinemans designed more bungalow courts than any other Pasadena
architects, the concept was quickly taken up by other architects working on both low
cost housing solutions, as well as a suburban architecture that could accommodate
the automobile. For example, early Modern architects Irving Gill and Rudolph
Schindler were developing their own projects to address low-cost, worker housing at
this time. As early as 1906 Gill was experimenting with safe, attractive, low cost
housing with an emphasis on the garden, in Hillcrest, San Diego. These simple
workers cottages were prototypes for what Gill hoped would become low cost
housing used across the country.
33
In 1910, Gill expanded on this idea at Bella Vista Terrace, also called Lewis Court,
for developer F.B. Lewis in Sierra Madre. Lewis Court was a fully realized garden
court for workers’ families, in which Gill drew upon traditional Spanish design both
aesthetically and in the layout. The cottages present a unified, unadorned surface to
the street, with round arches and covered loggias opening to gardens and communal
spaces in the center of the property. The units are small, but in addition to the
communal garden spaces, each resident has a private garden marked by a low stone
wall. The cottages are situated so that they would not intrude with the gardens or
block the sunlight from reaching all of the units. Gill would later proclaim Lewis
Court as his favorite project, although the quality of the design proved its undoing as
51
a low-cost housing solution, as the developer, after seeing how popular the court was
to its residents, raised the rents beyond the means of the average working family.
34
Rudolph Schindler, likely inspired by Gill’s Lewis Court, also experimented with the
bungalow court form, first for Jacob Korsen in 1921 (a project that never came to
fruition), and later in his Pueblo Rivera Court in La Jolla.
35
Built in 1923, Pueblo
Rivera Court was constructed as vacation housing for visitors coming to the beach
community in the winter – just as Pasadena’s early bungalow courts were designed
for winter visitors to that city. The client requested that Schindler draw on the
traditional architecture of the region (in this case Pueblo Revival), and the name,
which was later changed to El Pueblo Ribera (the Indian Village), also added a
romantic flair. El Pueblo Rivera was a 12-unit court, and Schindler took care to
situate the individual units so that the walls of one bungalow created a garden
enclosure for the next.
Gill and Schindler also worked to incorporate the automobile into their court designs.
Gill’s best example is the 1919 Horatio West Court in Santa Monica. The court is
laid out so that the individual buildings are situated at the edges of the lot, allowing
ample space for a generous central drive leading to a garage at the rear (Figure 23-
24). In 1924, Schindler designed a bungalow court for client J. Harriman in Los
Angeles. The concept for the Harriman Court (another unrealized project) is similar
52
to what will we see at the Heineman’s Milestone Motel. Schindler envisioned a
living complex that would also address the basic needs of the community, including
space for retailers, gas station, playground, and community center. Like the motel,
Schindler also gave center stage to the automobile. As at Horatio West Court, the
central pedestrian-oriented entrance is replaced with a driveway, and there were
twenty-one garages incorporated into the design.
36
Figure 23: Irving Gill, Horatio West Court
Source: Historic American Building Survey, Library
of Congress
Figure 24: Irving Gill, Horatio West Court
Source: Historic American Building Survey, Library
of Congress
53
In addition to its applications for vacationers, middle class and working class
families, bungalow courts became popular residences for senior citizens, as well as
for the growing movie industry which developed colonies of courtyard housing near
the studios. As early as 1911 the Heinemans began adapting the bungalow court
form for a variety of uses. One example is the Sawyer Sanatorium in White Oak
Farm, Ohio which consisted of 15 individual buildings connected by 1000 feet of
heated cloister, situated on acres of park-like grounds (Figure 25).

Arthur’s 1913 concept for a large-scale, own-your-own apartment complex – the first
of its kind in Los Angeles – was also inspired by the communal nature of the
bungalow court. The project was to be located in Mount Washington, and grandly
named Mount Parnassus (Figure 26). The complex was comprised of a double-H,
with each bay creating a courtyard space for those units (Figure 27). Ideologically,
Figure 25: Sawyer Sanatorium, White Oaks Farm, Ohio
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
54
Arthur wanted to create the same sense of community experienced by court
residents, and planned for a common dining room, ballroom, playrooms, billiard
rooms, an art gallery, bowling alleys, gymnasium, tennis courts and Roman baths.
37
The needs of the tenants were seen to by a full-time, paid staff, in contrast with the
modest arrangement for domestic activities seen at Bowen Court. Again, this
underscores the economic, and not ideological, motivation of projects undertaken by
the Heinemans.
Figure 26: Mount Parnassus
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 27: Plan of Mount Parnassus
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
55
Like Schindler’s work for J. Harriman, the bungalow court also inspired designs
directly related to the growing car culture in Los Angeles. Just as the residential
court typically used the central courtyard as a pedestrian oasis, for the commercial
court this space was readily adaptable to embrace the automobile. This format was
used for a variety of applications, including drive-through banks, schools,
laundromats, and offices. One example from the Heineman firm is their 1924
Streamline Moderne medical complex near 3rd and Alvarado, which featured a
bungalow court arrangement with a central driveway (Figure 28).

In the 1930s, the Depression caused almost a complete halt of the construction of
bungalow courts in Southern California. As the economy began to recover, some
new courts were constructed, but these new examples lacked the character and
attention to detail which made the earlier courts so attractive. During this time, the
Figure 28: Streamline Moderne Medical Complex
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
56
apartment building supplanted the bungalow court for multi-family dwelling. The
higher cost of land and construction meant that developers wanted a more efficient
use of the land than what could be attained in the low density bungalow court. Many
bungalow courts were torn down to make way for higher density construction, a
trend that continues today.
57
Chapter 3 Endnotes
1
Carey McWilliams, An Island on the Land, Southern California: An Island on the Land (Salt Lake
City, UT: Peregrine Smith Press, 1973), 113.
2
Stephanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood, James Tice, and Julius Shulman, Courtyard Housing in Los
Angeles: A Typological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 4.
3
“This is, Truly, City of Homes,” Pasadena Star-News (July 13, 1933).
4
Examples include camps on Martha’s Vineyard, on New York’s Chautauqua Lake, and on Winona
Lake in Indiana, among many others. Winter, The California Bungalow, 1980.
5
Two early examples include their 1911 Clarence Blood House, built by Sweet’s Bungalow
Company from one of Alfred’s designs, and the Moiso House built the same year.
6
Paul Gleye, The Architecture of Los Angeles, (Los Angeles: Rosebud Books, 1981), 72.
7
Los Angeles Housing Commission (1910), 10. Quoted from Dana Cuff, The Provisional City: Los
Angeles Stories of Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 127. The
report described the courts as “Cholo Courts,” which were largely built and inhabited by Mexican
workers.
8
Laura Chase, “Eden in the Orange Groves: Bungalows and Courtyard Houses of Los Angeles,”
Landscape, 25: 3 (1981), 31.
9
Polyzoides, Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles, 12.
10
Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 230.
11
Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution, 237. Homesgarth was one of Howard’s Garden Cities,
located in Hertfordshire, England.
12
Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America, (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1981), 174.
13
“Bungalow Courts,” Keith’s Magazine on Home Building (October, 1921), 138.
14
Southwest Builder and Contractor, September 17, 1908 and City of Pasadena Permit Files.
15
“Popular Form of Investment,” Los Angeles Times (January 3, 1915), V1.
16
“Bungalow Courts,” Keith’s Magazine on Home Building, 138.
17
Una Nixson Hopkins, “A Picturesque Court of Thirty Bungalows,” Ladies Home Journal Vol. 30
(April 1913), 99.
18
“Getting on Easy Street,” Los Angeles Times (January 28, 1923).
58
19
Muriel J Clifford, “A Great Little Business: A Girl’s Adventures as Landlady of a Bungalow
Court,” Los Angeles Times (September 27, 1931), K4.
20
Charles Greene, “Bungalow,” Western Architect (1908), 272.
21
Greene, “Bungalow,” 272.
22
According to building permits, the cost of construction at the Gamble House was $80,000, while the
average cost of a single bungalow in a bungalow court was $2,500.
23
Timothy J. Andersen, Introduction to California Design 1910 (Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Smith,
Inc., 1980), 9.
24
Chase, “Eden in the Orange Groves,” 34.
25
It is noteworthy that the Heineman family included several accomplished, professional women.
Ada Heineman, the fourth of the six Heineman siblings, was educated at Stanford University and went
on to have a successful teaching career in Los Angeles. She lived most of her adult life in Silver lake
and never married. Arthur’s wife, Irene Taylor Heineman, whom he married in 1907, was also a
prominent, working woman. Irene graduated from the University of California, and went on to have
an illustrious career in education. She taught in the Los Angeles high school system, was a trustee of
the Los Angeles Normal School, and in 1931, after serving for four years on the State Board of
Education, was named the Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of California.
25
Her other achievements include serving as president of the Southern California League of Women
Voters, director of the American Association of University Women, president of the Southern
California Phi Beta Kappa Association, and director of the California Association for Adult
Education. Arthur and Irene also had three daughters. This is not to suggest that Ada or Irene
encouraged Arthur to become a domestic reformer, but observing these women could have had an
impact on how he thought about home life and the traditional roles of men and women. Arthur was
also an inventor, and many of his inventions were labor-saving devices geared toward improving
domestic tasks.
26
City of Pasadena Building Permits.
27
“Many Homes Designed,” Los Angeles Times (June 12, 1910), V24.
28
Advertisement for Alexandria Court, California Southland (August-December, 1918).
29
Louis du Puget Millar, “The Bungalow Courts of California,” Urban Conservation Vol. 40
(November 1916), 338.
30
Hopkins, “A Picturesque Court of Thirty Bungalows,” 19.
31
Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution, 239.
32
“Home Builders Swell Permits,” Los Angeles Times (January 29, 1911), VI1.
33
Thomas Hines, Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2000),
65.
59
34
Esther McCoy, “Irving Gill,” in Five California Architects (Santa Monica, CA: Hennessey +
Ingalls, 1960), 85.
35
David Gebhard, Schindler, Third edition (San Francisco: William Stout Publishers, 1997), 45.
36
Gebhard, Schindler, 50. Though Gebhard points out the many flaws in Schindler’s concept, this
project is still important here, as a parallel to what Arthur was planning for the Milestone Motel, as
well as for Schindler’s vision of incorporating the automobile as a central part of the design.
37
Alfred Heineman, Photo Scrapbook, Greene and Greene Archives.
60
Chapter 4: Fred Harvey and the Mission Revival
Despite losing its appeal as residential architecture due to the rising cost of land and
an even greater demand for housing following World War II, the bungalow court’s
lasting legacy relates to its beginnings -- as tourist housing. In the 1920s, frustrated
by the lack of accommodations for the automobile tourists traveling up and down the
California coast, a condition he observed first hand, Arthur Heineman adapted the
bungalow court and created a new American institution.
It is impossible to think about Arthur Heineman’s contributions to tourism in the
early twentieth century without being reminded of the work of Fred Harvey (1835-
1901) before him. There is no doubt that Arthur was also thinking of Harvey’s
hotels and restaurants along the westward-bound railroad lines as he contemplated
the solutions for automobile tourism. Arthur’s concept for a series of roadside
motels can be linked directly to the concept that Harvey developed for the railroads
in the 1880s when the completion of the transcontinental railroad stimulated the first
flood of tourists to Southern California. Like Arthur Heineman, Fred Harvey
experienced first-hand the lack of accommodations available to travelers, as one of
his early jobs as a freight agent required him to travel extensively throughout the
western states.
1
He knew that the lack of proper facilities would ultimately hurt the
railroad business, and set out to bring fine dining and elegant hotels to the Wild
West.
61
By 1875, Harvey was running two eating houses along the Kansas Pacific Railroad,
and their success gave him the idea of establishing a chain that would service the
entirety of one of the national railroad lines.
2
In 1876, Harvey opened another eating
house in Topeka, Kansas, his first in a freight station along the Topeka & Santa Fe
line, and in 1878, Harvey entered into an agreement with the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe that allowed him to operate restaurants in any Santa Fe-owned property.
By 1883 he had established seventeen of these “Harvey Houses” along the Santa Fe
line.
3
In 1889, the railway gave Harvey exclusive rights to manage and operate his
eating houses, lunch stands, and hotel facilities upon the Santa Fe's railroads west of
the Missouri River. When dining cars were added to the rail lines, Harvey was hired
by the Santa Fe to manage those as well, and he brought his same high standards and
exacting nature to that venture as he did with his own eating houses. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the Santa Fe began a promotional campaign for the
Southwest as a vacation destination, using “Meals by Fred Harvey” as an important
marketing tool.
Critical to the success of the Harvey Houses were the “Harvey Girls.” Fred Harvey
recruited the Harvey Girls through advertisements placed in newspapers throughout
the East and Midwest. All the girls had to be between eighteen and thirty years old,
62
attractive and intelligent, and were put through a rigorous screening and training
process at the Fred Harvey school where they learned the delicate skill of dealing
with the public. These young women were the perfect companions for the lonely
businessmen on the road, and Harvey instituted a policy that the Girls not marry for
at least one year after they were hired, to ensure some return on the time and effort
invested in their training.
4
The Harvey Girls became so popular that Will Rogers
quipped that Harvey “kept the west in food and wives.”
5
With his string of hotels, Harvey sought to transform the desert into a tourist
paradise. The first two hotels completed were the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque
and La Fonda in Santa Fe.
6
In 1882, Harvey opened the Montezuma Hotel in Las
Vegas, the premiere first-class hotel in the Western United States. Harvey intended
this property to be a model for other hotels throughout the west, and determined to
maintain the highest of standards despite the cost. Harvey’s hotels and eating houses
embraced the nostalgia for the past prevalent in the Southwest at the time with
Mission Revival style designs, Native American arts, and in their overall treatment
of Native peoples as tourist attractions.
The romanticism of the Mission Revival is an important link between Fred Harvey’s
work in the nineteenth century, California boosters and proponents of the Arts and
Crafts movement at the turn of the twentieth century, and Arthur Heineman’s
63
development of the roadside motel in the 1920s. All three emphasized a
romanticized version of California’s past, and nostalgia for a simpler time that never
really existed. The Mission era commenced in 1771 when Father Junipero Serra, a
Franciscan priest, proposed a campaign to convert California’s Native American
population to Catholicism through the creation of missions throughout the state. In
1776, the first mission at San Juan Capistrano was built
7
, and ultimately twenty-one
missions were established at regular intervals from San Diego to San Francisco,
creating “centers of civilization” where Native Americans could be taught
Catholicism and embark on useful trades.
The style of the missions was developed by Serra and the other Franciscan
missionaries, who drew on the architectural traditions of Old Spain. California’s
climate and geography, as well as the limited expertise of the Native Americans who
were enlisted to carry out the plans, also impacted aesthetic choices. General
characteristics include a picturesque composition, frank expression of functional
elements, large expanses of blank walls marked by ornamentation at a few crucial
points such as around openings, and a prominent tower and dome.
8
By the 1830s the Mission system was languishing, and in 1833 the Mexican
Congress passed the Act for the Secularization of the Missions of California. They
retained control of the Missions for another decade, but in 1845 the church was
64
forced to relinquish several mission properties, selling some at auction and renting
others.
9
Those remaining in the hands of the church were neglected and in disrepair,
as California’s past had not yet been co-opted into the realm of mythology and
romanticism. This started to change in the 1860s, however, and by the 1880s a full
scale revival was underway, led by California boosters drawing on a new interest in
the history of the west and the romanticism and exoticism of the Hispanic culture.
10
This was of course heightened with the 1884 publication of Helen Hunt Jackson’s
Ramona, which further blurred the line between fact and fantasy in California’s past.
In the 1880s there was great scholarly interest in the history and preservation of the
missions, and in 1888 Charles Lummis founded the Association for the Preservation
of the Missions. This heightened awareness of the missions, combined with the land
rush at the end of that decade, resulted in the beginnings of mission imagery in new
architecture, a practice that became widespread among architects on the West Coast
as they searched for a regional architecture in the 1890s.
11
By the turn of the twentieth century, Mission Revival motifs were common in both
commercial and residential architecture, and proponents of the burgeoning Arts and
Crafts movement also embraced the mission ideals. A February 1902 article in The
Craftsman conveyed to its readers the common virtues of the Arts and Crafts
philosophy and the missions, which include “communal property, manual and mental
65
labor, and apprentice-like partnership between the skilled and the unskilled, a
cooperative work spirit, and growing awareness of the West as a unique region.”
12
The railroads embraced the Mission Revival for the design of train depots throughout
the Southwest. Tile roofs, arches, and bell towers were seen at Southern Pacific and
Santa Fe stations from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, and all points between.
Railroad tycoons also compared modern train travel to the historic missions, with the
Southern Pacific stating in 1900 that “the Franciscan friars journeying northward
from San Diego a century and a quarter ago made their trail almost as the way now is
of the Southern Pacific.”
13
The railroads furthered their regional promotionalism by
organizing “Ramona” tours and encouraging tourists to visit missions located near
the rail lines. Native American-themed attractions also featured prominently in
regional tourism, and at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, the Santa Fe
Railroad created a “painted desert,” which included buildings made to resemble the
native architecture of Taos, the Navajos, and the Apaches, and was populated by 300
members of local tribes.
Figure 29: Castaneda Hotel
Source: Northern Arizona University Digital Library
66
Named for Spanish explorers, most of Fred Harvey’s hotels also adopted Mission
Revival-style architecture. The 1898 La Castaneda Hotel (Figure 29) was one of the
early Harvey Houses to be built in the Mission Revival Style, soon to be followed by
many others throughout the Southwest. Fred Harvey’s primary architect for these
luxury hotels was Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (1889-1958), both an architect and
interior designer. Harvey first hired Colter in 1901 to decorate his Alvarado Hotel
14
,
and she would spend most of her career working for Harvey and the railroads.
Colter was considered an expert on Southwest Native American art and culture, and
tried to integrate native designs into her own works. Fred Harvey also collected
indigenous arts and crafts, including baskets, pottery, and textiles, that were
displayed in his restaurants and hotels. At the Alvarado Hotel, Colter and Harvey
created an “Indian Building” where Native American women sold their arts and
crafts (Figure 30). The Harvey Company built twenty-three hotels along the Santa
Figure 30: Alvarado Hotel, “Indian Building”
Source: Library of Congress, American Memory
Collection
67
Fe line, of which only three are still in operation: the Grand Canyon’s El Tovar and
Bright Angel Lodge, and La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
At the time of his death in 1901, Fred Harvey was operating dining cars along 12,000
miles of railway, fifteen hotels covering a distance of almost 2,000 miles, and forty-
seven restaurants.
15
His sons continued to expand the holdings of the Harvey
Company through the 1920s, and at the height of its success, the Harvey Company
employed over 5,000 people, half of whom were women.
16
The depression and the
advent of the automobile had a devastating effect on the railroad industry, ultimately
leading to the demise of the Harvey Company.
68
Chapter 4 Endnotes
1
“Fred Harvey is no More,” Los Angeles Times (February 10, 1901), 4.

2
Donald Duke, “Fred Harvey System: Civilizer of the American Southwest,” in Santa Fe: The
Gateway to the American West Vol. 2 (San Marino, CA: Golden West Books, 1997), 371.
3
Duke, The Gateway to the American West, 371.
4
Duke, The Gateway to the American West, 374.
5
Peter Fish, “Mr. Harvey's Neighborhood: Pioneer Entrepreneur Fred Harvey,” Sunset Magazine
(May 1996). I first read this Will Rogers quote in this article, although it is repeated in virtually every
periodical and online article about the Harvey Girls.
6
Duke, The Gateway to the American West, 380.
7
Rexford Newcomb, The Old Mission Churches and Historic Houses of California: Their History,
Architecture, Art and Lore (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1925), 35.
8
Newcomb, The Old Mission Churches and Historic Houses of California, 99.
9
“Missionary Era: Rise and Fall of the First Civilizing Element in California,” Los Angeles Times
(October 21, 1892), 1.
10
Karen Weitze, California’s Mission Revival, (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1984), 7. This
book was instrumental in my discussion of the Mission Revival included in this chapter.
11
Weitze, California’s Mission Revival, 45.
12
Weitze, California’s Mission Revival, 115.
13
Weitze, California’s Mission Revival, 86.
14
The Alvarado Hotel was demolished in the late 1960s, but a replica was built on the site in 2002,
which still stands today.
15
“The Rise of the Harveys,” Los Angeles Times (May 7, 1911), V19.
16
Stanley Turkel, “Frederick Harvey: Civilizer of the West,” Lodging Hospitality (July 1, 2005),
http://www.allbusiness.com/accommodation-food-services/accommodation-traveler/1033921-1.html.
69
Chapter 5: Automobile Tourism
In the nineteenth century, travel was typically the privilege of the wealthy, but this
began shifting when industrialization produced a middle class with more income and
more spare time.
1
The beginning of the mass production of the automobile in 1908
was also a giant leap toward making the automobile accessible to the masses, and to
the democratization of travel. In the 1920s, the automobile was the leading
consumer product in the country, and by 1925 there was one automobile for every
six Americans (compared to one for every 100 in Great Britain).
2
The automobile
and the freedom it represented touched the American spirit of individualism and
exploration, and the new motor tourist – upper and middle class alike -- was lured by
the adventure of the open road, unencumbered by the routes and schedules of the
railroads. Long distance touring was romanticized in the early twentieth century, as
travelers saw themselves as “modern pioneers in motorized prairie schooners.”
3
In the 1880s, the tireless work of the California boosters lured winter travelers from
the East and Midwest to enjoy the perpetual good weather in the land of sunshine. In
the twentieth century, these same promoters adapted their marketing tactics to appeal
to the adventurous spirit of the automobile tourist. George Wharton James
remarked, “No other state in the union offers so many opportunities to the
automobilist as does California. It is both Mecca and paradise...Though it is a
truism, it, nevertheless, will bear repetition that California is unique in the
70
comprehensiveness of its scenery. Everything is here provided, from the highest
snow-clad mountain summits to the playas…”
4
The Automobile Club of Southern California, established in 1902, also played a
major role in advancing the popularity of automobile tourism. The organization was
founded by enthusiasts from a variety of local motor clubs who combined forces to
defend the automobile from its detractors, and to lobby for better highways. In 1905,
they published their first road maps, and in 1917 began to produce hotel guides.
5
Vacationing on the road was promoted as “a radiant source of freedom and
pleasure,”
6
and James wrote in 1915 that “The citizens of California alone own over
a hundred thousand automobiles, and thousands are brought into the State by tourists
who come both winter and summer to enjoy its climatic, scenic and restful
advantages.”
7
In Southern California, the All-Year Club, founded in 1921 by a group of Los
Angeles business owners frustrated by the seasonal nature of tourist travel and its
impact on property owners, also became a powerful force in the marketing of
automobile travel.
8
Although the Land of Sunshine and Ramona imagery was still
prevalent in the 1920s, the All-Year Club realized that the future of Southern
California was as a bustling metropolis to be enjoyed by all, and shifted their
promotional materials accordingly. These efforts by the All-Year Club underscore
71
the broader impact of the automobile on the growing city, as well as on the
democratization of leisure travel in the 1920s.
9
Following an exhilarating day enjoying the freedom of the open road, early auto
tourists were faced with where to take their families in the evening to rest for the
next day’s journey. Hotels were still primarily located along the railroad lines and in
the cities, and even for affluent travelers, the prospect of having to face a lobby of
guests and hotel employees while dirty and dusty from a day of driving was not
desirable. Travelers complained of the hotel industry’s unreasonable dress codes,
bad service, and bad food.
10
Gender issues were also prevalent, as women felt
uncomfortable in business hotels, and men didn’t fit in at the leisure hotels that
catered mostly to wives and children.
11
Parking was also problematic, and often not
conducive to performing the necessary maintenance for continuing the voyage.
Thus, many travelers took up auto camping as a way to combat these
inconveniences, with the added benefit of an even greater sense of freedom and
spontaneity, unencumbered by the need for schedules and reservations.
Promoters of the automobile also pointed out the economic sense of car travel. They
presented the car as a “democratic, efficient, and frugal alternative to existing
transportation.” If a family chose to vacation within a few hundred miles from home
and spent the night camping by the roadside, the expense was approximately $1.00
per day, per person, allowing for gasoline, food, and a few basic necessities. Adding
72
a hotel stay brought the price up to $2.50 per day, and taking a train to a summer
resort cost $3.00 - $5.00 per day, plus the cost of the rail ticket.
12
So with a renewed spirit of adventure and a low-cost mode of transportation,
Americans hit the road. Instead of staying in hotels, these travelers simply brought
their sleeping accommodations along with them. Tents had become popular in the
1870s for hunting trips, but enjoyed a resurgence in the early twentieth century by
these nomadic auto travelers who camped along the road on the outskirts of town.
13
Automobile-related publications also provided helpful tips on how to facilitate your
family’s needs on the road, and methods to convert your automobile into a portable
hotel.
In 1920, Popular Mechanics Press produced the “Auto Tourist’s Handbook No. 1,”
which included “133 practical plans for making automobile touring easier, less
expensive, and more enjoyable (Figure 31).”
14
This publication asserted that the
most economical way to travel is to have your car arranged for sleeping on the
inside, and provided all the necessary information for building a “camp car.”
Automobile manufacturers also responded to this trend by creating ready-made cars
specifically for camping, with innovations such as “auto-tents” bolted to running
boards, “auto-kitchenettes” stored on fenders, and seats that could be pulled out to
create berth-like beds.
15
73
Auto camping as an idyllic, anti-establishment pursuit was over by World War I, as
farmers, schools and other property owners grew tired of the increasing numbers of
tourists who camped for free on their land, creating pollution, damaging property,
stealing produce, and leaving trash and debris in their wake. These “tin can
tourists”
16
were no longer welcome, and no trespassing signs were posted,
schoolyards were closed, and tickets were issued to offenders. This turn of events
prompted local businessmen to create city-run campgrounds in the middle of town,
in the hopes of capitalizing on potential tourist revenue by encouraging visitors to
shop and eat in local stores and restaurants. These municipal camps tried to capture
Figure 31: “Auto Tourist’s Handbook No. 1”
Source: Library of Congress, American Memory Collection
74
the romantic essence of the roadside camps, while offering more conveniences and
amenities.
While the camps proved popular, their success turned out to be a passing fad.
Increasing numbers of motorists overwhelmed the sites, and more affluent travelers,
feeling the effect of the democratization of the automobile, abandoned the public
camps to avoid spending the night with “undesirable” people. To discourage this
unwanted element, the municipal camps started charging fees, which eventually led
to competition from private camps and the end to the municipal system.
17
Private
camp promoters added cabins to their growing list of amenities, so those who wanted
more elaborate lodging could still be accommodated outside of the hotels. The
cabins became so popular that the use of tents was abandoned altogether, and by the
early 1930s the terminology reflected this shift, as owners started using the word
court instead of camp to describe their facilities.
Due to his extensive travels up and down California’s coast, Arthur was no doubt
aware of the growing number of cabin camps that were cropping up along the major
auto routes in the West in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The camps
were growing more elaborate, and also proving to be successful business ventures.
Arthur’s entrepreneurial nature surely sensed the unique opportunity to enter the
75
tourism trade at this juncture and not only take the cabin court to the next level, but
to do for the automobile traveler what Fred Harvey had done for the railroad tourist.
76
Chapter 5 Endnotes
1
Clark Davis, “From Oasis to Metropolis: Southern California and the Changing Context of
American Leisure,” Pacific Historical Review (August, 1992), 361.
2
Calvin Coolidge papers, “Transportation – General 1923-28: Automobiles and the Highways,”
Library of Congress, American Memory Collection, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/query/r?ammem/coolbib@field(subj+@band(Roads+)).
3
Roger White, “At Home on the Highway,” American Heritage Magazine, (December 1985),
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1985/1/1985_1_98.shtml.
4
George Wharton James, California Romantic and Beautiful, (Boston: The Colonial Press, 1914),
376.
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Automobile_Association.
6
Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 80.
7
James, California Romantic and Beautiful, 359.
8
Davis, “From Oasis to Metropolis,” 362.
9
Davis, “From Oasis to Metropolis,” 360.
10
Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1979), 47. Mr. Belasco’s work is quoted in numerous books and articles dealing
with the subject of auto tourism, and was particularly helpful with the research of this section.
11
Belasco, Americans on the Road, 56.
12
Belasco, Americans on the Road, 42.
13
White, “At Home on the Highway.”
14
“Auto Tourists Handbook No. 1,” Popular Mechanics (1920).

15
Miles Corwin, “Success Story Motels: An Ex-Outcast is Now Inn,” Los Angeles Times (November
3, 1986), Metro 1.
16
John Jakle, Keith Sculle, and Jefferson Rogers, The Motel in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1996), 31. “Tin can tourists” was a term developed to describe these campers,
referring to the debris they left along the road as well as the “tin lizzies” that they drove.
17
Chester Liebs, Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture (Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 172.
77
Chapter 6: From Cabin Court to Motor Hotel
The name “motel” and the idea for accommodating automobile tourism evolved in
1924, during discussions in Arthur’s office in downtown Los Angeles.
1
Arthur
credits several people for collaborating on the concept, including Stan Mitchell and
Carl MacStay from the Automobile Club of Southern California, who also shared
important statistics about tourism; members of the Heineman firm, including Alfred,
Roy Sutherland, head draftsman, B.M. Morris, engineer, and Lillian Lasater,
secretary; as well as attorney John Alvord and advertising consultant Dana Jones.
Arthur would be the major financial backer of this venture, along with smaller
investments from other interested businessmen. In June of 1924 he filed the
incorporation papers for the Milestone Interstate Corporation, which had as its
officers Arthur Heineman as president; John Gage (of the Pig-n-Whistle restaurant
chain), vice president; banker Marco Hellman, treasurer; Lillian Lasater, secretary;
James Westervelt, general manager; and hotelier William Sibbald, manager of hotel
operations.
They devised a plan for a series of eighteen motels from San Diego to Seattle, with
each approximately 150 to 200 miles, or the milestone at the end of a day’s drive,
from the next. The Milestone Corporation acquired property in San Luis Obispo,
Salinas, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, and San Jose for the sites of the motels. San
Luis Obispo was geographically the fifth in the series, starting in San Diego and
78
traveling north, but it was selected as the first to be completed because it was a
logical stopover between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
2
The motels would be
located on the outskirts of the cities, with easy access on and off the main highways
along the Pacific coast. The company’s promotional brochure promised that
motorists would enjoy “not only the scenic beauties of the open road, but all the
comforts of his own home, while away from home.”
3
Arthur felt that the auto camps
provided travelers with a level of accommodation slightly better than total
discomfort and certainly did not measure up to the accepted standards of American
life. His well-appointed cabins would have hotel quality amenities such as indoor
plumbing, kitchenettes with gas ranges and refrigerators, and superior furnishings,
without the high construction cost of a multi-story hotel.
4
The Milestone Motel was selected as the name for this new venture, but was quickly
changed to Mo-tel. The hyphen is an important part of its lore. Arthur
Figure 32: Milestone Mo-tel billboard
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
79
commissioned a local sign maker in San Luis Obispo to paint a billboard reading
“Soon Building Here, Milestone Motel” (Figure 32). After the sign was installed,
the sign maker started receiving calls informing him that the word hotel was
misspelled on the sign, with an m instead of an h. According to Arthur, they
“realized people weren’t ready” for this new term, and his advertising consultant,
Dana Jones, suggested adding the hyphen. The second owners changed the name to
the Motel Inn, and designed their signage so that the first letter alternated between an
“h” and an “m” to dispel any uncertainty about property’s intent (Figure 33). Arthur
registered the term motel with the copyright office of the State of California in 1925,
and with the Library of Congress on December 29, 1924.
5
California voided its
copyright program because of confusion and overlap with the federal program, and
the copyright with the Library of Congress was allowed to expire. The term motel
became a standard part of the lexicon in about 1940, and its final integration into
American culture came in 1950 when it was added to Webster’s Dictionary.
6
Figure 33: Motel Inn
Source: San Jose State University
80
Four and one third acres of land were purchased from San Luis Obispo rancher Neil
Cook for a cost of $6,000 for the site of the Milestone Mo-tel.
7
It was built by the
Maino Construction Company in San Luis Obispo for $80,000, and opened on
December 12, 1925, welcoming guests to stay for $1.25 a night (children were free)
to enjoy “a good night’s rest under the most ideal and satisfactory conditions.”
8
Arthur’s vision for his series of motels included identical pricing, accommodations,
and amenities, ensuring that the traveler feel the comfort of familiar surroundings up
and down the coast. Arthur stated that the innovation of the motel was “destined to
democratize the highways…”
9
The Milestone Mo-tel was situated on the northern end of San Luis Obispo,
immediately off of the Pacific Coast Highway (Figure 34). The most prominent
feature was the main driveway that led travelers off of the road and into the safe
Figure 34: View of Milestone Motel from the highway
Source: Author’s photograph
81
haven of the motel. The buildings on the highway frontage contained the office,
large public dining room, commissary, and parlor lobby, and shielded the motel
guests from the traffic and noise of the outside world (Figure 35-36). To the rear of
the property was a public kitchen, laundry, drying yard, full-service garages, and
playgrounds. Framing the common space in between were the individual bungalows,
which contained a variety of room types, ranging from standard four-room units, to
deluxe sitting-room apartments to be shared by two couples, and simple hotel rooms
for motel aids and chauffeurs, so there were accommodations to “fit the whole
motoring public.”
10
There were six of the two-apartment bungalows, and twelve that
housed standard rooms. All of the bungalows were outfitted with modern
conveniences such as private baths, hot and cold running water, specially designed
furniture, and telephones. Most important, however, were the individual garages
attached directly to each unit (Figure 37).

Figure 35: Rendering of front of Milestone Motel
Source: San Jose State University
82
Each bungalow included a fully-equipped kitchen and dining area, to afford the
weary traveler the opportunity for a home-cooked meal. But unlike at home, maid
service was provided to relieve the burden of washing dishes and making the beds.
The cottages were also outfitted to feel like home, with flowers on the tables,
curtains on the windows, cozy corners, and comfortable beds. Amenities also
Figure 36: Milestone Motel Plan
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
Figure 37: Rendering of Milestone Motel bungalow with garage
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
83
included a common laundry room (which was provided free of charge), and a garage
and car wash so the self-sufficient traveler had everything he needed to keep his
automobile in top touring form. For travelers who were not inclined to be
completely self-sufficient, overnight laundry and auto service were available so the
family could awake, refreshed and ready to hit the road, with clean clothes and
polished car.
Like Fred Harvey before them, Arthur and Alfred Heineman co-opted the Mission
Revival imagery for their motel. Although the Mission Revival had long fallen out
of favor by the 1920s, they specifically chose to capitalize on the romanticism and
nostalgia for California’s past in this new venture. According to Arthur, the chain of
motels would “recapitulate to a marked degree the history of the Franciscan Friars
and the early lore of California.”
11
A 1925 article in Pacific Travel linked the
Milestone properties directly to the route of the missionaries, using the same tactic as
the railroad executives in the nineteenth century:
If Junipero Serra is looking down today on the California he loved so
well, he is noting the fact that King’s Highway, with its old missions a
day’s horseback ride apart, has become a thoroughfare for teeming
millions, and that along this shining pathway through an earthly
Paradise there is now being established a chain of remarkable hotels
for motorists, which has been given the names “Milestone Mo-tels.”
12
In an overt attempt to romanticize the automobile, car salesman and manufacturers
used images of the missions and missionaries to advertise new advancements in
84
travel. In 1912, John McGroarty had created the “Mission Play,” which was an
enormously successful tourist attraction that played at the San Gabriel Mission for
sixteen years. During a promotional stunt in 1920, the local distributor of the Paige
car hired the actor who portrayed Father Junipero Serra to pose with their car and
ponder what Father Serra would have thought of the automobile. The actor
proclaimed, “I can picture him today, leaving the humble mission and entering this
beautiful Paige car, and being swiftly conveyed from mission to mission, making the
journey in a few short days, instead of months as before.”
13
Architecturally, the Milestone Mo-tel drew from the archetypical Mission Revival
elements. The main buildings and the individual bungalows exuded a nostalgic
charm, described as the “atmosphere of the Spanish mission, of friendliness, warmth
and comfort” by one reviewer.
14
The design for the tower on the main office
building was taken directly from the terraced campanario at the mission in Santa
Barbara (Figure 38-40). The office building is connected by a ramada or arcaded
corridor, which had windows on both sides. The ramada also bridged the public and
private realms, as the view in one direction was of the bustling highway, and in the
other, the peaceful courtyard of the motel. The exteriors were clad in a smooth
stucco coating and topped with red tile roofs. There were Spanish-style lanterns at
the entrance to each bungalow, along with iron grill work that served both a
decorative function and to make guests feel some security in their location directly
85
off the roadway. Waitresses in the restaurant even wore bright Spanish costumes to
complete the imagery.
Figure 38: Mission Santa Barbara
Source: USC Digital Archives
Figure 39 (left): Mission Santa Barbara belltower
Source: USC Digital Archives
Figure 40 (right): Milestone Motel tower
Source: Author’s photograph
86
Newspapers and periodicals enthusiastically supported this new opportunity for the
automobile tourist. The San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram stated that the motel was a
“model of perfection and comfort,” while Pacific Traveler was even more effusive in
its praise:
The apparent broad vision and sincere purposes of the Milestone
Interstate Corporation officials have enlisted the hearty interest and
cooperation of businessmen throughout the state, and that this new
enterprise will be welcomed by the motor traveling public generally is
predicated by all who have come into possession of the facts upon
which the enterprise is founded.
15
Despite such high hopes and so much in its favor, the motel venture was not a
profitable one for the Milestone Interstate Corporation. Arthur, who had invested
much of his own money, lost his fortune and never really recovered. It is unclear
exactly why the Milestone failed, but rumored cost overruns on the property, in
addition to the many services and amenities offered at low prices, certainly
contributed. Combined with the onset of the Depression at the close of the decade,
and not only did Arthur never see another in his series of motels come to fruition, but
he was also forced to sell the Milestone to new owners.
Today, the motel is a ubiquitous part of the architectural landscape, although in a
different form than Arthur’s vision of the courtyard bungalow creating a home away
from home. In 1985, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the first motel, the
Smithsonian mounted an exhibition entitled “At Home on the Highway: Auto
camping, Motels, and the Rediscovery of America” which revisited the phenomenon
87
of Americans on the road. Roger White, organizer of the exhibition, related how
changes in tourism were ultimately reflections of what was going on at home, “Just
as people began moving away from cities to the suburbs, when they took vacations
they began staying in motels by the highway, instead of downtown hotels. This
whole movement had a distinctly anti-urban flavor.”
16
The deliberately romantic architecture that Fred Harvey and the Heinemans chose for
their tourist accommodations, using Spanish or Native American stereotypes to draw
tourists, contributed to roadside architecture as novelty that became popular in the
1950s.
17
Motels that resembled missions, adobe huts, and even teepees sprang up
along the highways. In addition to drawing on the past to sell rooms, these motels
also used these gimmicks to capture the attention of motorists speeding along the
highway. In fact, the Milestone Mo-tel was painted pink for a brief period in its
history as an eye-catching gimmick.
The Milestone, (by then the Motel Inn) closed for business in 1991. There were
various plans for rehabilitation since that date, but sadly, none of them came to
fruition. The property is currently owned by the neighboring Apple Farm, which
originally intended to rehabilitate the property and operate it as an extension of their
main hotel. Unfortunately, those plans were also discarded, and now only remnants
of the original motel remain (Figure 41-44). All of the bungalows have been
88
demolished, and only portions of the facades of the office and dining room buildings
are still standing.
Figure 41: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005)
Source: Author’s photograph
Figure 42-43: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005)
Source: Author’s photograph
Figure 44: Remnants of Milestone Motel (2005)
Source: Author’s photograph
89
Chapter 6 Endnotes
1
Arthur Heineman, letter to Bill Henry, June 1, 1957. This letter was written in response to the
column “By the Way with Bill Henry,” which ran in the Los Angeles Times on May 29, 1957, in
which the originator of the motel was incorrectly identified.
2
“Milestone Company to Build San Jose Motel,” Mercury News (November 24, 1925). There are
also photographs in the collection of the Greene and Greene Archives of signs announcing the
impending arrival of the motel in various cities.
3
Milestone Interstate Corporation, “The Milestone Marks the End of a Perfect Day,” Promotional
Brochure (1925).
4
Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1979), 141. According to Mr. Belasco’s research, the average hotel cost $5,000
per unit to build, the simple cabin $150-$300, and a more elaborate cabin like those proposed by
Arthur Heineman $1,000.
5
Heineman, letter to Bill Henry, June 1, 1957. According to Arthur’s letter, he registered the term
with the Library of Congress numerous times: December 29, 1924, December 30, 1924, January 19,
1925, February 3, 1926, February 7, 1926, February 9, 1926, and March 18, 1926.
6
Sally Ann Connell, “San Luis Obispo: World’s First Motel Aims for New Lease on Life,” Los
Angeles Times (September 17, 2000), A32.
7
“$1,000,000 Motel to be Erected Here,” San Luis Obispo Morning Tribune (February 4, 1924).
Although the headline read $1 million, the construction cost was correctly identified in the body of the
text as close to $100,000.
8
Milestone Interstate Corporation, “The Milestone Marks the End of a Perfect Day.”
9
James Warnack, “All the Comforts of Home in Modern Wayside Inns,” Los Angeles Times (January
18, 1925), B7.
10
Warnack, “All the Comforts of Home in Modern Wayside Inns,” B7.
11
Charles Estey, “Hotel for Motorists,” Pacific Coast Travel (October 1925).
12
Estey. “Hotel for Motorists.”
13
“Rapid Advance in Methods of Travel,” Los Angeles Times (February 22, 1920), V16.
14
“Motel Opens for Service to Motor Public,” San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram (December 12, 1925).
15
Estey “Hotel for Motorists.”

16
Miles Corwin, “Success Story Motels: An Ex-Outcast is Now Inn,” Los Angeles Times (November
3, 1986), Metro 1.
90
17
Chester Liebs, Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture, (Baltimore, MD: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 176.
91
Chapter 7: Arthur and Alfred Heineman and Life after the Milestone Motel
Arthur had invested heavily in the Milestone Mo-tel, and when it failed, not only did
he suffer financially, but his pride was also damaged to the point that he was no
longer interested in working in the field of architecture.
1
The office stayed open for
a few more years without him, but the loss of Arthur’s enthusiasm, combined with
the onset of the Depression, resulted in all of the draftsmen moving on to other
opportunities until only Alfred remained. The firm officially closed in 1933.
Arthur retreated into his private life, and spent the rest of his days focusing on his
inventions. Alfred reported that it was not in Arthur’s nature to accept anything as
final. Throughout his life, if he saw something that could be done better or more
efficiently, he put his mind toward a solution. He was mostly preoccupied with
small, labor-saving devices for every day life, and nothing was too small for his
attention. Early in his career, Arthur conceived of several domestic innovations
include raising sink drain boards and counter heights from twenty-eight to thirty-
three inches, a standard that is still used today, and adding toe slots to kitchen
cabinets to make it easier to reach into a cabinet without stubbing your toe.
2
In 1915
he patented an iron with an automatic shut-off feature, and in the 1930s received
patents for a variety of packing methods, mostly for foods.
3
Other ideas that were
not patented include a stool for field laborers, a photographic device that would
automatically put slides right-side-up in a projector, and an orthopedic footstool.
92
And of course he turned his attention to the automobile, working on improvements to
the seat belt, turn signal, and anti-theft devices.
4
Alfred’s talents and contributions to the firm have been historically overlooked, even
by his own family, and perhaps especially by Arthur. According to Arthur’s eldest
daughter, Elizabeth Heineman Swope, both Walter and Arthur dominated Alfred,
almost to the point of being unkind, and Alfred spent his life in his brothers’
shadows, coming out of his shell only after Arthur’s death.
5
While work by the firm
is commonly referred to today as “Heineman and Heineman,” Arthur stipulated that
their work officially be referred to as “Arthur S. Heineman and Associates, Alfred
Heineman, draftsman,” underscoring Alfred’s secondary status to his older brother.
6
In his later years, afraid that Arthur would be upset at the way that their work might
be portrayed by future architectural historians as a result of his donation to the
Greene and Greene Archives, Alfred wrote in a letter to Dr. Robert Winter:
I have had the feeling the materials and meetings in relation to the
Heineman architectural work all have come through myself, that there
is a lack of connection in relation to my brother who was the Architect
(sic) of the firm and I was only an associate. As far as usable material
at Gamble House it is concerned that it is predominantly mine, but
there would not have been an Architectural firm without Arthur. It’s
true I had done some drafting of plans for others and I had built a few
residences for sale, but I have never had the business push that would
have developed a successful office.
7
93
Despite such protestations by Alfred, and although the firm bore Arthur’s name, it is
more accurate to state that each brother had unique talents that contributed to the
success of their partnership.
Alfred would continue to experiment in architecture and design following the
dissolution of the firm, but with the exception of a few commissions, most of his
designs were theoretical projects that were never built. Alfred had a life-long
passion for city planning, and together with his collaborator George Damon, served
on the planning commissions for Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Pasadena; Alfred was
also a planner for the Hollywood Improvement Association from 1940 to 1962.
In 1941, Alfred experimented with designs for his own version of the mass-
produced, democratic house. He called his idea the “10-10-10 Home,” as it included
ten features and ten closets in 1,010 square feet (Figure 45-46). There were a variety
Figure 45-46: Ten-Ten-Ten Home
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
94
of stylistic choices for the homeowner, including farmhouse, English half-timber,
Colonial, Swiss Colonial, Moderne, Cape Cod, and Southern Seaboard.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Alfred worked on civic improvement projects (none
was ever realized), such as a scenic drive connecting Griffith and Elysian Parks, and
a new plan for the Los Angeles Convention Center. He also conceived of a
Hollywood Movie Museum (Figure 47), and a new plan for the Los Angeles Public
Library (Figure 48), both of which were based on the u-shaped courtyard model.
These projects featured extensively landscaped courtyards flanked by what he called
“Modernized Mission Revival” buildings, with vehicular access designed to be
convenient without intruding on the park-like settings.
Figure 47: Alfred Heineman design for Hollywood Museum
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
95
Toward the end of his life, Alfred really began to nurture his creative talents, taking
up painting and even participating in a local art class. He seemed to draw immense
pleasure from this pursuit, and the materials that he donated to the Greene and
Greene Archives include numerous examples of his work, including a sketchbook
entitled “Just Because I Like to Draw,” and a second containing his drawings for a
series of Christmas cards that he created to send to family and friends.
Figure 48: Alfred Heineman, Plan for Los Angeles Public Library
Source: Greene and Greene Archives
96
Chapter 7 Endnotes
1
Stephen Pauly interview with Pasadena Heritage, November 12, 2004. (Stephen Pauly is Arthur
Heineman’s grandson and Heineman family historian.)
2
Alfred Heineman, letter to Dr. Winter, May 1, 1972.
3
Mary Heineman Pauly, “Arthur S. Heineman: Some of his Inventions,” Unpublished list, May 20,
1972.
4
Mary Heineman Pauly, “Arthur S. Heineman: Some of his Inventions.”
5
Stephen Pauly, letter to Robert Winter, October 15, 1997.
6
Mary Heineman Pauly, letter to Dr. Winter regarding an early draft of Toward a Simpler Way of
Life.
7
Heineman, letter to Robert Winter, May 1, 1972.
97
Chapter 8: Conclusion
There were many amateur architectural firms working in Southern California in the
early twentieth century, mostly speculators hoping to capitalize on the period’s real
estate frenzy, but Arthur S. Heineman and Associates was unique among them. The
longevity of their partnership was extraordinary, particularly because many of their
contemporaries disappeared once the building boom waned with the advent of World
War I. The Heinemans are not as famous, nor were their designs as refined, as those
of Charles and Henry Greene, but for two men with no formal architectural training,
their body of work is an impressive accomplishment. Their careers follow the arc of
turn of the twentieth century Los Angeles – beginning with the proliferation of the
Arts and Crafts bungalow and then turning toward new forms that responded to the
automobile. With the invention of the motel in 1925, the firm secured its place as
innovators in the history of American popular culture.
98
Bibliography
“Alexandria Court, Pasadena, California.” Western Architect Vol. 28 (February
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Asset Metadata

Creator Lazzaretto, Christine (author)

Core Title The bungalow and the automobile: Arthur and Alfred Heineman and the invention of the Milestone Motel

School School of Architecture

Degree Master of Historic Preservation

Degree Program Historic Preservation

Publication Date 02/15/2007

Defense Date 11/01/2006

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Bungalow,bungalow court,Heineman,motel,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Advisor Breisch, Kenneth A. (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Wentos[?], Robert (committee member)

Creator Email christine@pasadenaheritage.org

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m252

Unique identifier UC1140435

Identifier etd-Lazzaretto-20070215 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-157005 (legacy record id),usctheses-m252 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Lazzaretto-20070215.pdf

Dmrecord 157005

Document Type Thesis

Rights Lazzaretto, Christine

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu