ARCHITECTURE : Home Tour Offers a Peek Into Elegant Past

Admirers of vintage Southern California architecture will have an unusual chance to visit four private homes in Santa Monica Canyon today.

For $30 a ticket--the money goes to benefit the L.A. Conservancy and the 101-year-old Canyon Charter School--visitors are invited on a walking and driving tour of houses that express what organizers call “the California dream”--comfort, informal elegance and easy access between indoors and out.

The canyon, nestled between Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, has been settled for 150 years. It is a quiet refuge of shady streets and houses from different eras and architectural styles.

The tour is scheduled to begin at intervals between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., starting at the old schoolhouse on Entrada Drive. It will include tours of the historic school building, which now serves as the library of the modern-day Canyon Elementary School, and a stop at the 19th-Century Marquez family graveyard.

Homes featured include the Dolores Del Rio/Cedric Gibbons house, an Art Deco jewel tucked away behind a thick hedge.

Gibbons was MGM’s art director from 1924 until 1960. The designer of the gilded Oscar statuette, he won 12 Academy Awards during his career, which included such movies as “Gaslight” and “An American in Paris.”

Shortly after his marriage to the Mexican-born actress Dolores Del Rio in 1930, he designed the house, which presents a blank front to the street but opens up with tall glass windows on the canyon side to give residents restful views of the gardens, swimming pool (complete with pool house) and tennis court (complete with pavilion to match) below.

There is a remarkable all-black shower room and sleek stainless steel detailing throughout. “This is an intact Art Deco house, one of the most extraordinary in all of Los Angeles,” said Mary Alice Wollam, who helped organize the tour for the L.A. Conservancy. The Conservancy seeks to protect the city’s architectural heritage.

It is now owned by Ira Yellin, a developer whose properties include the recently renovated Grand Central Market Downtown, and his wife, Adele.

“They have restored it to its original beauty. It’s in perfect condition,” Wollam said.

Other houses on the tour include a Mexican-style hacienda designed by John Byers in the early 1920s. Byers was one of the first architects to introduce the Mexican style, complete with red-tiled roof and patio, to the Los Angeles area as the city began to grow after World War I.

The house was built as the model home for the area when the Santa Monica Land and Water Co. developed the neighborhood.

Cliff May, one of the most influential designers of the post-World War II era, will be represented by a classic ranch house.

One of May’s important contributions was to move the kitchen and garage from the back of the house to the front, making more room for barbecues and basketball games accessible through sliding-glass doors.

“These spread-out, one-story houses, informally elegant yet servantless, provided the perfect cocoon for the American family,” said Jody Greenwald, a lecturer on architecture for UCLA Extension. “It was the complete environment for the developing family of the station wagon way of life.”

May was self-taught, never becoming a licensed architect until a fluke of state bureaucracy granted him a license late in life. As a registered designer, he designed many custom homes but also provided the plans for some 18,000 mass-produced residences.

The fourth house is a Mediterranean-style estate. The Conservancy released little information about it at the request of its publicity-shy owners.