Roland E. Coate by Marc Appleton, Bret Parsons, and Steve Vaught
For
the second installment in the “Master Architects of Southern California,
1920-1940” series, the authors focus on the work of Roland E. Coate, FAIA, first
known for Early California and Monterey Revival homes, and later adding
multiple LA revival styles—Spanish, Georgian, Regency, Colonial—to his
repertoire. His skill of adapting styles is best summed up by one of his many
Hollywood clients, the actress Myrna Loy, who remarked of her 1936 home: “Our
architect designed a sprawling clapboard house combining Colonial grace with
the contemporary freedom we wanted.” A hallmark of the series is that projects
are shown through facsimile pages of The Architectural Digest in its early days
when the focus was on work by Southern California architects (and it still
started with “The”). Built between 1924 and 1939, many of the 36 homes featured
are in and around Pasadena; remarkably, all but one remain extant.
Tailwater
Press/Angel City Press, 2018, 208 pages, hardcover, $60.
