Irving Gill’s Marston House to Open Soon as a Museum
Fans of architect Irving Gill wince each time they drive by 6th Avenue and Redwood Street. On the site where one of Gill’s finest designs was completed in 1907--the Klauber house--a 10-story, 36-unit condominium tower now stands.
Other Gill houses have met similar fates. His 1911 house for the Timken family at 4th Avenue and Walnut, an example of Gill’s minimal, modern style, was replaced during the 1970s by offices. Newspaper chain heiress Ellen Browning Scripps’ 1915 home was a La Jolla coastal landmark for years and eventually became home to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, but it was covered up when the museum expanded during the 1940s.
The nine-bedroom, five-bath, 8,500-square-foot 1905 house Gill designed for George White and Anna Gunn Marston on 7th Avenue near Balboa Park remains as the grandest survivor of the architect’s San Diego legacy (he also designed houses in Los Angeles and on the East Coast).
Now, nearly three years after Mary Gilman Marston, George’s daughter, left the house to the city of San Diego, restoration is well under way. After a grand opening for the public on Oct. 21, the Marston house will be open to the public as a museum every Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“I think the Marston house is important in Gill’s career,” said Bruce Kamerling, a San Diego Historical Society curator who is writing the definitive biography on Gill and overseeing the refurbishing of the house. “It was kind of a turning point in his move toward a more modern point in architecture. Though basically English Cottage in style, he simplified the design and introduced innovations that later became trademarks.”
With its steep shingle roof, broad eaves and clean-lined stucco-and-brick exterior, the house shows Gill in transition between earlier, more elaborate designs rooted in the Victorian era and his signature modern style.
Clearly, Gill’s work was revolutionary. In 1907, his stark, flat-roofed stucco box of a house for Russell Allen was completed in Bonita, a year before Austrian architect Adolf Loos helped launch the modern movement with the proclamation that “ornament is crime.”
Gill’s earliest drawings for the Marstons depict a house covered with English-style half timbering. But after construction began, he changed important details. Kamerling believes the turning point came when Gill visited Chicago during trips east to visit clients while he was working on the Marston house.
During the early 1890s, Gill and Frank Lloyd Wright both had worked at the same time for architect Louis Sullivan in Chicago. Kamerling surmises that when Gill returned to the Windy City early in the new century, he undoubtedly saw the long, low Prairie-style houses being designed by Wright and others.
Back in San Diego, he modernized the Marston house--most noticeably, he did away with the half-timbering, giving the exterior a much simpler appearance.
Along with ties to the Midwestern Prairie style, the Marston House also is one of San Diego’s finest remaining examples of the Craftsman style, which is known for simple, solid construction using brick, wood, stone and other natural materials. The Marston house proves Gill an equal to such famous Craftsman-era architects as Greene & Greene in Pasadena.
Amazingly modern bathrooms reveal Gill’s obsession with sanitation. Claw-foot tubs encased in a pale reddish material called magnesite were sleek and easy to clean.
Bathroom floors slope upward slightly to form a sill beneath doors, which prevented water from flowing into the hallway. Bathroom walls and floors meet in a gentle, seamless curve designed to keep out insects.
Clutter is minimized by built-in cabinets, shelving, pocket doors and bench seats beneath windows.
Part of the Craftsman philosophy, as espoused by proponents like designer Gustav Stickley in The Craftsman magazine, was a return to nature, which meant fresh air and lots of natural light.
Gill liked to greet visitors with natural light. At the Marston house, a long, wide central hallway, with rich redwood beams and paneling, gives a clear view from the entry to French doors at the back of the house. These pull in natural light and frame views of the garden beyond. Gill’s floor plan for the house is a pleasant departure from stuffy Victorian designs and was an early relative of today’s casual, open plans.
Gill paid careful attention to details. In the dining room, quarter-sawed oak paneling has a rich, swirling pattern. Gill used neat little “butterfly” inserts to hold together horizontal wood wainscoting in the living room. He beveled the front edges of bookshelves to give them a light, graceful appearance.
Many rooms are stunning, but much work remains before the restoration will be complete, both cosmetic repairs and the acquisition of furnishings.
Several rooms have been furnished with simple Craftsman-era pieces acquired with Kamerling’s guidance, but other rooms remain virtually bare. Historical society member Grayson Boehm willed the historical society $50,000 when she died a year ago, to be used for living room furniture. Kamerling hopes to acquire several pieces designed by Stickley and his brothers.
The exterior of the house also needs repairs. The city, which maintains the outside of the house and adjacent grounds, is long overdue on its promise to re-roof. Kamerling hopes the work will be completed in time to protect the interior from winter rains.
While Wright, Sullivan, Loos and others are mentioned again and again in architecture books, Gill seldom receives credit as a pioneering modernist. Although the Marston house is not from his mature modern period, over the long haul, the Marston house should serve as a landmark attraction that will help earn Gill the national respect he has long deserved.
Even before his death in 1936, Gill was revered by those few who had taken time to study his work.
“Except for Irving Gill in California, who created out of radical simplification of Spanish Colonial design a modern treatment of poured concrete construction for houses, (Frank Lloyd) Wright has been the only modern architect of consequence of the first quarter of the century in America,” renowned architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock wrote in 1934.
VISITNG THE MARSTON HOUSE: After the San Diego Historical Society’s members-only opening Oct. 20, the Marston house will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 21, and every Friday and Saturday, also from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Spring/Summer 1990 issue of the Journal of San Diego History includes a self-guided walking tour of the historic homes along 7th Avenue, a short biography of George and Anna Gunn Marston, and articles by Kamerling on Gill and the Marston house. The journal is for sale at the house, 3525 7th Ave.
