Descanso tea garden architect dies

Marshall Allen

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE -- Modernist architecture pioneer Whitney Smith

has died, but his sense of style and structure will live on in the

Japanese Tea House at Descanso Gardens.

Smith, 91, died March 13 of natural causes at his home in Bend, Ore.

He designed the Descanso Tea House in the 1960s, when he operated the

Pasadena architecture firm Smith and Williams. The firm produced many

award-winning national and Southern California projects, including

private residences, schools and community buildings. Another of Smith’s

popular designs is the entrance complex to Huntington Library in San

Marino.

Smith’s tea house provides a “stunningly beautiful focal point” in the

Japanese garden, said Richard Schulhof, executive director of Descanso

Gardens. The house is a fusion of Japanese and Western culture, Schulhof

said.

“It’s more about Californians grooving on Japanese culture, than it is

an interpretation of Japanese culture itself,” said Descanso curator Tim

Thibault.

The tea house is an open-air redwood structure situated in the middle

of azaleas, camellias and a traditional rock garden. It seats 50 people.

The house was built without nails “in the Japanese manner,” according to

a Descanso press release for the house’s June 3, 1966 dedication.

The “signature element” of the tea house is its blue ceramic tile

roof, which was custom made in Nara, Japan.