Interview of Robert E. Alexander

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JULY 24, 1986

LASKEY

Robert Alexander was an architect in Los Angeles in the thirties, in its most explosive and interesting time, and also on the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission in the late forties when a great deal was happening to change the look of Los Angeles. But you're not a native of Los Angeles, are you, Mr. Alexander?

ALEXANDER

No, I was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, a peninsula that sticks into lower New York harbor. At a time-- Well, it was before the petrochemical industry took over in that area. We were within a short distance of the lower New York Yacht Club, which had a sunset gun every evening which I remember. My father [Edwin Hixson Alexander] had been born in Jersey City, which is adjacent to it; my mother [Clara Evans Alexander] in south Jersey near Moorestown, New Jersey. As a city boy he became entranced by fresh vegetables and so forth growing on my mother's father's farm, so that even in Bayonne we had a flourishing garden every year at the back of the house. I lived there until I was six years old. I was born in 1907; therefore I'm an Edwardian. I remember some things that you wouldn't connect with a place like Bayonne. For instance, in a sort of warehouse adjacent to the New Jersey Central Railroad, I remember seeing many times a crowd of people in all kinds of strange dress. Turned out it was a movie company making movies before Hollywood became the real center.

LASKEY

When would this be, about 1912, 1913?

ALEXANDER

Well, yeah, 1912.

LASKEY

And they were filming on location, so to speak?

LASKEY

Well, they had an indoor set. Of course, they couldn't depend on the weather the way you could here, so they were making movies in a sort of a warehouse next to the railroad line. My Grandmother Alexander lived a couple of blocks away from where we lived. Father was one of eight children, four boys and four girls. Two of his brothers still lived in Bayonne.

LASKEY

What's your father's name?

ALEXANDER

Edwin Hixson Alexander. Like many parents, they were interested in seeing that their children got a good education and grew up in a suburban area, I suppose. So we went searching. I remember going out on the Jersey Central to Westfield, New Jersey, which is the place they decided on, where we took a surrey with a fringe on top out with a real estate man to see the sights. And he pointed out some grand estate that's no longer there, where there were bronze deer on the lawn and all that sort of thing. In any event, it was a small town of fewer than 15,000 people. They rented a house first for two years while Father designed and had a house built that's still there in great condition.

LASKEY

Your father designed it?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

Was he an architect?

ALEXANDER

He was not an architect, although long after I went to architectural school I found out that that had been his lifelong dream. Of course, you might suspect that. But he never overtly came out with it.

LASKEY

That's interesting.

ALEXANDER

He was, however, draftsman to his firm; that is, his brothers had started a tile-contracting outfit in Manhattan. At a certain point there was the usual crash panic on Wall Street and throughout the nation. Every few years they had a corrective crash of that kind. Then on this occasion my grandfather, whom I never met (Grandfather Alexander), had been building brick row houses in Brooklyn like crazy. Suddenly the bottom fell out of the market, and so he was out of his normal occupation, sitting at home with nothing to do. His boys, who had started this tile-contracting outfit called Alexander and Reid Company, kidded him so much that he left home. At which point my father, who was in the fourth grade, was induced to leave school to help his brothers in their outfit in New York.

LASKEY

In the fourth grade?

ALEXANDER

Yes. And from then on he educated himself beautifully. He went to Cooper Union College, I guess you call it.

LASKEY

In New York?

ALEXANDER

He took life drawing and various other things, of which I remember samples. He did a lot of drawing and painting. And then he became their draftsman. Incidentally, before he could claim to be a draftsman, he recounted a story in the blizzard of 1888, I think it was. Well, that could be checked as to when there was an enormous blizzard. It was so tough that he and his brothers walked across the Hudson River to open the office on a Saturday morning. [laughter] Of course, there was nobody else in there.

LASKEY

But it was open.

ALEXANDER

But, by god, they were going to open the office or else. But to be able to walk across the Hudson--that hasn't been done many times in history. Well, in any event, he eventually became president of the company. They did the tile in all the well-known hotels, starting with the Bervort and the Waldorf-Astoria, and many hospitals and all the Childs' restaurants when they were all tile. There were tiled floors, walls, and ceilings, when it was the fad to be very pure and pristine with your food after the muckraking days of-- I'm thinking of the guy that started EPIC [End Poverty in California].

LASKEY

Upton Sinclair.

ALEXANDER

Upton Sinclair, yeah. The Pure Food and Drug Act came in and then everybody was germ conscious. Pasteur had made a stir about germs and suddenly cleanliness was the way to go, and white tile was just in.

LASKEY

That's very interesting. I never would have made that relationship between the architecture being influenced by what's going on in the world. It seems so removed from the architecture. Did your father employ tile makers, tile layers, tile setters?

ALEXANDER

Yes. Tile setters.

LASKEY

Was this a very specific kind of a craft, with craftsmen involved?

ALEXANDER

Absolutely, very much so. One of my uncles set tile for his brothers and then became an officer in the company. Well, if you know good tile work, it's quite different from slapping things on the way they do now with plastic adhesives and that sort of thing. It was quite an art at one time, with masonry, with cement materials, to do a good job of tile setting.

LASKEY

Were the tiles made in New York, New Jersey, or were they--?

ALEXANDER

Well, some were made in New Jersey. I remember going to a plant near the Raritan River that is near-- What would it have been? Perth Amboy, somewhere in there. The Raritan River had deposited some excellent clay, which is always the foundation of a tile-manufacturing industry. I'll never forget the sight of a room full of boys younger than I was--that is, younger than twelve years old--at little benches, with hammers attached to the benches so that they would swivel, holding long sticks of tile, out of which they would make tesserae by nipping them with the end of a hammer and making little squares out of these things with irregular sides so that they looked like ancient Roman or Greek material.

LASKEY

Yeah, the tesserae are the little pieces that are set into the tile to make intricate patterns, is that right?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. This was child labor, which I had seen for the first time there.

LASKEY

This was before child labor laws, obviously.

ALEXANDER

Yes, probably. And a lot of their tile was made in Zanesville, Ohio, I believe, but also some came all the way from California. The name of the firm was Batchelder. I met the founder of that firm, who was still here in the thirties.

LASKEY

Well, Ernest [A.] Batchelder was--

ALEXANDER

That's it, right.

LASKEY

The Batchelder out of Pasadena. And this, of course, is also the craftsman movement, so you have these beautiful art tiles.

LASKEY

Correct. Well, they used a lot of that--it came all the way from California. I was amazed as a kid, you know.

LASKEY

So the kind of tile work that your family or dad was involved in then was art, as well as the sort of--

ALEXANDER

It involved a lot of delft tile from Holland also. They did work for the [Frank A.] Vanderlip estate on Long Island and this, that, and the other. They did outstanding tile work. And when it came to tile on the subways, some, I would call them gangsters, took over, [laughter] but my father's firm's work was outstanding. So they pretty much cornered the important work from an artistic standpoint.

LASKEY

How did that affect you as a young boy? Were you impressed by the quality of the work, by the beauty of the tile, or did you really not pay much attention to it?

ALEXANDER

I didn't pay all that much attention to the tile, but we had several paintings hanging in the house that my father had done when he was quite a bit younger. His letters were sprinkled with little sketches that were just delightful. So I had a dose of art at home from that standpoint. Then we lived all my growing-up days nineteen miles from Manhattan. Before I was twelve, I would go in by myself on a Saturday on the Jersey Central commuting train and take the Liberty Street Ferry across and then a subway or L uptown, and then go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the [American] Museum of Natural History. And four years later--that is after I was twelve I guess, yeah, twelve to sixteen, something like that--my father gave me season tickets to the Walter [J.] Damrosch symphony orchestra [New York Symphony Society children's concerts]. That was always on Saturday afternoon, and every Saturday morning I'd crawl all over the two museums there.

LASKEY

How wonderful. Were they the Metropolitan--?

ALEXANDER

--art museum.

LASKEY

The Metropolitan and the Museum of Natural History.

ALEXANDER

Museum of Natural History, yeah, at the foot of the park. I had a lot of contact with events in Manhattan.

LASKEY

New Jersey must have been quite different then. You mentioned that earlier on. It wasn't a total urban experience; you came through a suburban or a country kind of environment.

ALEXANDER

Oh sure, sure, right, yeah. Well, there was always an intimate woods at the back door, you might say, which is in such contrast to what I found out here. Of course I came to love this open country, the great forest experience here. I've done a great deal of backpacking and I know the Sierras pretty well. But it's an entirely different experience from being able to walk out your back door into a woods, an intimate place where the trees aren't all that big but the trailing arbutus is there.

LASKEY

So you essentially had both worlds when you were growing up. You had the great metropolis of New York with all it had to offer, and then you had this sort of country environment.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, this was pretty countrylike. Well, elementary school was just a literal baseball throw from our house right at the foot of the street on Broadway, Grant School. But when I went to what you'd call junior high school, seventh and eighth grades, I used to walk to the center of town practically. I suppose it wasn't more than a mile, but in the process I'd go through people's backyards, but mainly went through what later became Mindowaskin Park--which was sort of a swamp. Mindowaskin Park, Indian name. When I was in high school, somebody had the idea to put a little dam up and dredge some of the swamp into a little lake, which is still there, and drain a lot of the other area. So it had become a civilized park. But when I walked to school I walked through this thing, with skunk cabbages to kick and dogtooth violets and all sorts of things.

LASKEY

Sounds lovely. Was it on the ocean or was it pretty far? I don't know the geography of New Jersey.

ALEXANDER

Well, it's adjacent to Plainfield; it's probably twenty miles from the ocean. But, of course, after my migration to California-- I think people still do it to some extent, but at that time anybody who had just arrived was fair game to get them to admit that this was the greatest place on earth and that there was no place like it on earth, and so forth. And as a defense mechanism, I would relate to them the fact that at my home, instead of having to go forty miles to the ocean, I'd go twenty miles to get to the ocean. The beaches were absolutely magnificent--which they were. Instead of going 125 miles to Palm Springs to see cactus and that sort of thing, I could find native cactus within 80 miles of my home.

LASKEY

In New Jersey?

ALEXANDER

Yes, in what's called the Pines in south Jersey. I could even find right near the Pines a virgin forest, absolutely virgin because it wasn't worth cutting down, you know. [laughter] It was full of deer and scrub oak and that sort of thing that never had been cut.

LASKEY

Well, I think when we talk about Baldwin Hills Village much later in the interview, I think that you said that the inspiration of Westfield was part of what influenced the design of Baldwin Hills Village, that remembrance of going--

ALEXANDER

The place that my father decided on for this house was called Stanley Oval, because it was a cul-de-sac, a very short cul-de-sac with a great big oval. The oval was maintained and owned mutually by the property owners surrounding it. It was a place for a little bit of mild softball and that sort of thing, not a very good athletic park. But it was a quiet, dead-end street. It was a novel thing in those days. So when it did come to Baldwin Hills Village, I had this dream of something like that but on a much grander scale of course. I've been back to visit that house, let's see, just within the year or maybe a year and a half ago, and I went through it. It was quite an experience. It had been a long time, fifty years or so since I'd seen it. And the house itself was just as I remembered it. The only changes that I found were in the basement, where partitions were still marked out on the floor. I could see where there'd been a pretty extensive room for canned goods about half as big as your living room here. Another place was called the laundry, where I also had my chemistry set. I used to give my mother a bad time by getting acid in the laundry tubs.

LASKEY

Oh, she must have loved that.

ALEXANDER

The laundry tubs are still there, no partitions around it. There were a couple of coal bins for two different sizes of coal, one for the coal range and one for the furnace. They were all gone; the oil furnace [took over].

LASKEY

Yeah, of course.

ALEXANDER

Otherwise, the house was as I remembered it. Of course the kitchen had undergone some changes, but it was still there, the same size and shape--no longer any wooden drainboards and that sort of thing, no longer a coal stove. Of course, the coal stove went when I was still there. It was quite-- The experience affected me. I loved it. I loved the experience to see this thing still there.

LASKEY

To have it still be there. It was probably an experience you wouldn't have in Los Angeles. [laughter] How long did your family live there?

ALEXANDER

Well, let's see, I think we moved in 1915, and they must have lived there until 1935 or maybe later. During the Depression--when I was not there--my mother fell for a chain-letter scheme and happened to win out and get a zillion silk stockings. [laughter]

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

So she decided to set up a little shop in the house. My father's business went down the tubes pretty much. I mean, it was in bad shape for several years.

LASKEY

In the early thirties, yeah.

ALEXANDER

Many large contracts that he had, the owners would declare bankruptcy and not pay. It just set him way back. So my mother developed this little lingerie shop in her home and then bought a few gift items for a gift shop. Then came summer, and we'd always gone somewhere for summer vacation. Mother said, "By golly, we're going to have another vacation, and I'm going to pay for it." So they went down and found a place at Spring Lake that they could rent for the summer. It required a restaurant operator to run it, so she said, "Okay, I'll hire a couple"--which she did--"and I'm going to run the gift shop, and that's the way we're going to make out." So she set up her gift shop, and about halfway through the summer she found that the people she had hired were stealing her blind. By the custom at the time, in order to get business, somebody selling butter wholesale would say, "We'll give you 10 percent or 20 percent of the order if you'll just order from us." These people would order a dozen pounds of butter when they needed six and throw the rest in the garbage. So she said, "By golly, that's not going to happen again." So the next time they went down and they rented and finally bought a great big old mansion right on the ocean and right across the street from the Monmouth Hotel, which is an enormous hotel, and made it into a little hotel [the Sandpiper Hotel] with a famous--it became famous--restaurant on the ground floor and gift shop and rooms upstairs, not many, I guess a three-story building. So they finally sold the house in Westfield and moved down there. They had an enjoyable life, running this thing five months of the year, fooling around in Florida and whatnot otherwise.

LASKEY

Your mother sounds like quite a woman.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, she was a dynamo.

LASKEY

What was her name?

ALEXANDER

Clara Evans Alexander.

LASKEY

You said the hotel was on the ocean. This was where?

ALEXANDER

Spring Lake.

LASKEY

And Spring Lake is a city in New Jersey on the ocean?

ALEXANDER

Yes, on the ocean. It's not as far south as Atlantic City, but it's south of Manasquan and Asbury Park and that sort of thing. For one year when I was back there-- Well, in the summertime that year I took a ferry (that no longer exists) that ran between Manhattan and Atlantic Highlands, which is south of Sandy Hook. So it was a long, long water ride and then a train from here on down. It was just like returning from Europe in the morning or going to Europe in the afternoon on this long ferry ride. It was wonderful. It went right through all the shipping that came into the harbor at that time.

LASKEY

You sound like you were relatively independent as a youth. Was that unusual, or was that your family, sort of coming and going to Manhattan, traveling around New Jersey?

ALEXANDER

Well, I spent a great deal of time with the family; all of the vacations that I can remember were family oriented. But yes, I was permitted some freedom, I guess you could call it, and spent a lot of time in the woods. Oh, one of the great things that my father gave me was a-- One summer when I was seventeen I went to Camp Quest and went on the Alagash trip that summer. The Alagash trip consisted of a canoe trip for a period of thirty days, more or less, three hundred miles in the Maine wilderness. At that time it was a real wilderness. And that was, you know, reliving one of my dreams, having read [John] Burroughs's Boy Scouts in America, Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods, this, that, and the other. I lived all of the experiences that I dreamed about and developed a real taste for camping out, which I've carried on to today, for that matter. We spent several summers in Maine. I had a friend, my best friend in Westfield. His father was a judge in the county court in Elizabeth. They had bought a little farm on Casco Bay outside of Portland, Maine. I spent several summers there or with my family at Sebago Lake, where my father went fishing every spring or landlocked summer. That was a mystique that probably went back in the family to a time when my father's mother, my grandmother, was born in Aberdeenshire in, let's see, some place that has become the onshore oil capital of the North Sea--Petershead. It was a fishing village. The family undoubtedly was up to their ears in fishing as a living.

LASKEY

This is something that your father carried with him?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, he took me on many a fishing trip.

LASKEY

So that the canoeing, the backpacking, the outdoor life is something that at least marginally came through your father, something that he had enjoyed. Did your mother enjoy it? Was she an outdoor lady?

ALEXANDER

Well, she grew up on a farm, from that standpoint. She was born on a farm. [laughter] No, she wasn't [an outdoor lady]. She'd much rather go--as we did many times--to Beach Haven, which is in south Jersey on the shore south of Atlantic City, and stay at the Inglewood Hotel, which was one of the best there. That was her speed. I mean, she--

LASKEY

A city person?

ALEXANDER

Well, she was a country person who loved the city life, and my father was a city boy who loved the country life, you see.

LASKEY

And you sort of got the best of both of them.

ALEXANDER

Well, that's one way to look at it.

LASKEY

Do you have any brothers or sisters?

ALEXANDER

Yes, I have one of each. My brother [Harold Alexander], four years younger than I, also went to Cornell University, graduated in architecture--more talented than I, I think, artistically. I did bad enough by being in the class of '29 and graduating in the beginning of the Depression. But he did even worse. By the time he graduated four years later, 1934, there were just-- Well, there wasn't anything when I graduated and there wasn't anything when he graduated. So anyway, he got a job with the Libby-Owens-Ford [Company]. One of his roommates was the son of an officer of the company there. He went in with college graduates who were sent through every department in the company, a little bit of this and that to see where they thought they might fit in. One Friday afternoon, he went to the local pub, and one of the officers of the company came up to him and said, "How are things going?" He said, "This is for the birds. This company doesn't do anything but make flat glass. No imagination whatsoever. What you call a research department that I was in last week--they don't do any research except on ceramics to make glass pots." "Well, what would you do?" He said, "You have this damned sales force out there. I hardly ever see them, and they never come into the factory. But they have contact with the public. They would know what the public needs. Here is the makings of a research group if you just put a little imagination into it and asked the salesmen what might be made out of glass that you could do. Then if you set up a little manufacturing unit to try it out and see if it is worth manufacturing, you might have going a three-way deal here." He said, "Well, I'll tell you, if you put that in writing, I'll take it up with the board on Monday." So that was the way, eventually-- I mean, it went through several cases of nepotism, but eventually he was appointed head of this new group in the company. And then he finally became vice president in charge of research and development .

LASKEY

For Libby-Owens-Ford?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and he's now retired living outside of Toledo. My sister [Eleanor Alexander Griffin], eight years younger than I, lives in Pennsylvania. I just visited her not so long ago. She's a Quaker. She's taught yoga for thirty years, I guess. She's done all the right things, eaten all the right things, just the opposite of anything I've done. No smoking, no drink, no alcohol, green vegetables, and so on and so forth.

LASKEY

She sounds like she was about forty years ahead of her time.

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't know about that. Here I am, without feeling any ill effects of my age, and I just got the word this year that she has cancer. In spite of her-- You do everything you can just right. It's just a damn shame. Well, those are the two siblings. We didn't fight very much. I didn't fight at all with my sister. My brother had an interesting introduction to education. That is, I was a good boy, and I always did the right thing in school .

LASKEY

You were?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. I mean, when I was in school. At that period I was not what I am now. I'm a naughty boy now. But boy, I got good grades all the way through, so I made a name for myself as a student in elementary school and high school. Along comes my brother, and this brother of his has made this name that he's supposed to live up to, and he'd be damned if he would. So he was very much ingrown. He'd spend hours and hours at home. He'd come home from school and go down in his little shop and make ship models that you wouldn't believe, just gorgeous things. He'd get a jeweler's lathe and turn out little cannon-model molds and make the models and the molds and pour these things and get a little knitting needle and saw it into little pieces and burn three holes in each one, so they'd be deadeyes, you know. He made these from the ground up, and they were just beautiful. He had one hobby or another going on at all times and no social life to speak of. And a lousy record in school. He went up through his junior year in high school, and I invited him up to Cornell. I met him at the train. I was playing football, so I had to practice all the time. I had a very good friend in architecture who took him around to see the place, and every time they came to a corner where there was a possibility of there being ice cream, he'd demand that they stop and have another strawberry sundae or something like that.

LASKEY

Was ice cream new or he just liked the idea of it?

ALEXANDER

I don't know. I'm just telling you my experience. I just heard about this, and that was what I heard. Well, pretty soon I got a letter from home: "What happened to Harold when he was at Cornell?" "I don't know what happened to him." "Well, all of a sudden he's bringing his classmates home. He's developed a social life. They tell me in school that he's getting good grades now. What's going on?" Well, what went on was that he decided he wanted to go to Cornell. Boom! He just--

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JULY 24, 1986

LASKEY

Let's continue with brother Harold.

ALEXANDER

Well, SO he succeeded in getting a recommendation from the principal, which was all you needed at that time to be entered at Cornell. So we had one year, my fifth year and his first year, together and cemented a lifelong friendship during that year. And followed by another, just in the fall, when in the depths of the Depression, when I wasn't getting anywhere with anything else, I was given a job of coaching freshman football there and lived with him and a couple of other characters at Louis Agassiz Fuertes' studio in Ithaca. Had a great time, got to know each other even better. So even though we have had divergent careers and probably opposite political views, we get along just fine when we do get together. It's a great pleasure.

LASKEY

Well, you mentioned that he did shipbuilding, model building, which shows somewhat of an artistic bent. What about you? You played football. Did you have any other hobbies? Did you draw? Did you have anything as a child that sort of indicated where your career in architecture would come from?

ALEXANDER

I don't think so. You know how it is: Johnny can draw until he's six years old. No, I wasn't particularly talented in that connection, although there was drawing in the family. I think I've related in writing that when my father set me down in my junior or senior year in high school: "What are you going to do? What are you going to be?" I wanted to be an archaeologist. He said, "You can't possibly make your living as an archaeologist," which I found out since is not true. I could have made a career in that. "Well," I said, "okay, how about foreign service?" "Well, now wait a minute, it takes a millionaire to be an ambassador." At that time there was no such thing as [Franklin D.] Roosevelt set up, which was official training for civil service. You were a rich man to get into it in general, not just to be an ambassador. It was sort of a hobby for people instead of a serious avocation, a vague vocation at that time. And then I said, "Well, how about architecture?" Since this was just at the right time in architectural history--the boom after World War I was still in effect--my father thought, "Well, sure, architects make money!" So he said, "Okay, that's a good idea." It came about that way, rather than an intense desire. Of course once I got into it, I just became dedicated to it and couldn't be turned away from it by anything, even during the hiatus of the Depression. But as I said, I think my brother was more talented, you might say, in drawing or in what you might call the art part of it. But I was-- In contrast to his experience when he was young, I was very social, not with a vast number of people, but we developed what we called the Secret Octagon Society, the SOS club.

LASKEY

SOS club. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

We had a meeting once a month or more frequently. I think it was just once a month. May have been once a week, that could be. Of course the refreshments were always the most important thing. But we also had a formalized agenda. We had officers, and we studied and followed Robert's Rules of Order. We always had a well-balanced program. Somebody played a musical instrument; somebody put on a science experiment or whatever; somebody did some entertainment like magic tricks; somebody read from Shakespeare. Everybody at the meeting participated in some way. We got on our feet formally, you know, and addressed this audience of seven people. [laughter] That was good training. That was more of a hobby than anything else I can remember.

LASKEY

Would this have been in high school?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

I think I read you also played a musical instrument, you were involved in music. Or did that come later?

ALEXANDER

No, that was in the high school years. That is, after going to four seasons of Walter Damrosch, my father wanted to know what instrument I'd like to play, and I said, "A cello." He said, "I can't afford one of those." I said, "Well, how about an oboe?" He said, "Those guys go crazy or they get consumption. You don't want to do that, do you?"

LASKEY

Oboe players get consumption?

ALEXANDER

Oboe, yeah, yeah. This was the myth at the time. You either go crazy or you get consumption.

LASKEY

I see.

ALEXANDER

I said, "No, I don't want to go crazy." I said, "I've noticed that the C-melody saxophone plays the same score as a cello." He said, "Oh well, we can get one of those." So he got me a C-melody saxophone that became obsolete several years thereafter. It's no longer made. It's obsolete now. And then after I tortured the family with that for several years, he bought me, before I went to college, a B-flat tenor, a silver job. Instead of having to polish this brass, I had a silver-plated job. Although I started by taking some lessons, I soon became tired of reading music and more or less went by ear on everything. In college I played in the saxophone sextet, of which Phil [Philip] Will [Jr.] was also a member. He's just deceased last year, one of the founding partners of Perkins and Will Partnership, architects in Chicago, and president of AIA [American Institute of Architects] nationally and that sort of thing. Very close friend for somebody I didn't see very much. So I did follow that a bit, and these days I enjoy playing an electronic organ and anything I can get my hands on, a harmonica or whatever, that comes along. So sure-- that's been a fun part of my existence.

LASKEY

Sports?

ALEXANDER

Just football. If the urge comes these days for exercise, I lie down till the urge goes away. [laughter]

LASKEY

No more football?

ALEXANDER

No .

LASKEY

But you're still backpacking and camping.

ALEXANDER

Well, I wouldn't backpack now, but, yeah, I love to camp outdoors. I don't do much of it now. I don't get a chance. But I've selected sites to live on that are pretty outdoorsy. For twenty years I lived on the top of Mount Washington, if you know where that is, looking across at the Sierra Madres and Mount Wilson.

LASKEY

Were you a neighbor of Jack Smith's?

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, yeah. I got into his column once in a while. Then I built a house on one of the choicest sites in Mammoth Lakes; the elevation of the living-room floor was eight thousand feet. And then built a house in Big Sur, right on the ocean, about fifty miles south of Carmel. So those, as living sites, have been oriented to the changing seasons and so on.

LASKEY

Beautiful. Well, you live in Berkeley now. Do you live in the Berkeley Hills?

ALEXANDER

No. I live in a little apartment that has its charm, in an old house that's just my age and looks worse than I do. It's just a block from Alta Bates Hospital. It's on Regent Street, north of Ashby [Avenue]. So it's within walking distance to the campus [University of California, Berkeley]. We look up at the hills and into a backyard with an enormous magnolia tree that has a life of its own; all kinds of dove, squirrels, and so forth inhabit it. No, it's not as wild and woolly as some of the other places, but--

LASKEY

Well, Berkeley can get pretty wild and woolly on its own.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, in lots of ways.

LASKEY

How was the decision made to go to Cornell?

ALEXANDER

Well, Princeton [University] would have been the obvious choice because it was very close to home, but at that time their architecture department was largely what I would call archaeological. It was oriented toward diggings in Cyprus and Athens and that sort of thing.

LASKEY

More historical than technical.

ALEXANDER

Rather than having to do with fitting one to becomed a practicing architect. MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and Cornell were more or less on a par as far as their objectives were concerned. I just fell in love with the Cornell campus. It's the most beautiful campus in America without any question of a doubt. I just fell in love with it. That was it.

LASKEY

Was it difficult to get into Cornell?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

Because coming, as I do, from the Midwest and then coming out here, we think of the eastern colleges as being extremely--

ALEXANDER

Today, it's out of the question. But at that time there was no such thing as an SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test], and my brother and I simply had our high school principal's recommendation that we were college material. They didn't inquire any further. The dean accepted us. It was a personal-interview matter. They were interested in what your extracurricular activities were and what you did and that sort of thing. But it was not hard to get into. After all, the entire campus had a population of fewer than five thousand students.

LASKEY

Really? Well, what was the campus like that impressed you so much?

ALEXANDER

Well, it's on a hill overlooking Cayuga Lake, and the terrain is such there that a stream makes a regular-- we'd call it a canyon here--what they call a gorge. There are two gorges two hundred feet deep. They go right through the heart-- Well, one of them through the heart of the campus and the other on the campus, let alone others in the countryside. Rolling hills across the lake and Civil War-type buildings around the main quad. They're still there and maintained; one exception is the new library. But it never was an urban place, and it isn't now. It's removed from city life, which is not true of anything around Boston or Cambridge or New Haven. At the time it was founded, transportation was more or less by the Erie Canal up into the Finger Lakes. I've looked at records of a house that was built above the shore of Cayuga Lake, in which their barrels of lime and that sort of thing were barged up the canal and down the lake. That was at a time, when this [the Cornell campus] was built, when it was quite inaccessible. For many, many years the only way to get there was the Lackawanna Railroad.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Even now, it's like crazy to find an airplane that will go. The Mohawk Airlines go or the Allegheny--

LASKEY

The Mohawk Airlines. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

Or something like that. But it's like crazy. You've got to go to Newark and then get a puddle jumper that goes up there. Otherwise you go by automobile I guess. But at that time it was quite a trip by automobile, although we went up there, a couple of hundred miles from nowhere--from some place I mean.

LASKEY

To nowhere.

ALEXANDER

So I just-- Well, I challenge you to find a more beautiful campus today. The buildings aren't all that good, but the setting is great.

LASKEY

The setting hasn't been destroyed by the growth of the campus?

ALEXANDER

No, no. What God hath wrought, man cannot destroy.

LASKEY

Try as they will.

ALEXANDER

As San Francisco's finding out, you can do a pretty good job, but you can't really wreck it.

LASKEY

Was Cornell--? I'm trying to remember. Was it an early co-educational school?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes. It was co-educational when it opened. This was really quite unusual at the time. It was one of the land grant colleges which after the Civil War were granted lands in the West as sort of an endowment to be sold for whatever they could get for them--as a result of which it had certain obligations, such as that it was obligated to have an ROTC [Reserve Officers Training Corps] program.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

When I went there, freshman and sophomore years involved compulsory ROTC for the men. I think that's no longer true, but I'm not sure. Although I got out of it most of the time. The football coach made a deal with the general in charge, so that during football season I didn't have to go, which was great. Otherwise, I was currying great, big, fat horses in the artillery, learning to take an automatic pistol apart, and learning to deal with a French 75-mm cannon, firing over Cayuga Lake--crazy. But I didn't have very much of it.

LASKEY

Yeah, I think that the ROTC thing sort of, with the protest about Vietnam, ceased being mandatory. I'm not sure about that.

ALEXANDER

I'm not either.

LASKEY

Did you go specifically into the architecture school at Cornell, or was it a basic undergraduate degree?

ALEXANDER

No, they didn't have that kind of a system, which I can regret now in a way, but anyway, that's the way it was. Five years in architectural school with certain electives. I took public speaking, for instance, in the English department.

LASKEY

Which, I think you've said in your writings, has been extremely helpful as an architect.

ALEXANDER

I don't know how in god's name it happened, but I was on the first board of managers of the Willard Straight Hall, which had just been completed as the student union, and then became president of the Saturday noon club or Saturday lunch club, which entertained visiting dignitaries. So I became accustomed to introducing these characters and entertaining them afterwards and that sort of thing--which was also very helpful. I made it an objective to go out of my way to find the opportunity of public speaking. Yes, I think that's as important a tool as drawing in architecture.

LASKEY

When you went for your interview, what did they want from you? What were they looking for from you when you went into Cornell? Or were they looking for anything?

ALEXANDER

I'll be darned if I know for sure, but I think my father's background and knowing architects in Manhattan and working with them probably helped in conversing with the dean. The fact that my nose wasn't 100 percent to the grindstone was in my favor. The whole school of architecture consisted of not more than two hundred people. The graduating class got down to twenty, something like that. So it was a pretty intimate thing, and it was the liveliest school on campus. They were always doing something that called attention to themselves, good or bad, and the envy of a lot of the students from that standpoint.

LASKEY

From a social point of view?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, raising hell in one way or another.

LASKEY

Creatively.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, could be. [laughter] Their participation in Spring Day made it an outstanding event.

LASKEY

Spring Day is a special celebration at Cornell?

ALEXANDER

Yes. It started out largely as the finals of the crew races, but then it became an outrageous sort of time for parades and outrageous things such as the Beaux Arts Ball, which was a campuswide mystery and kind of a crazy time.

LASKEY

What do you mean by saying that the Beaux Arts Ball was a campuswide mystery?

ALEXANDER

Well, I should say that the very name developed a certain mystique, if you know what I mean.

LASKEY

I assume from the name that it was a ball put on by the architecture school?

ALEXANDER

Right. For the architects and mainly attended by architects. But it gained a certain amount of infamy and fame and so forth. Remember, this is during the period of Prohibition, when everybody in college was required to get drunk on occasion.

LASKEY

You started Cornell in 1925. So we're talking in the period from 1925 to 1930, the jazz age.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right, and it was outrageous.

LASKEY

Was it really?

ALEXANDER

Well, looking at it now it's so goddamned innocent it isn't even funny, but at the time it was outlandish in the eyes of our parents and so forth.

LASKEY

We're talking about bathtub gin and flappers, the Charleston.

ALEXANDER

Well, the great parties, the junior prom, the great campuswide dance held in the drill hall which had been built for ROTC, an enormous hall, with Jimmy Dorsey at one end and somebody, Paul Whiteman, at the other end of the hall playing one after the other all night long. One of those things.

LASKEY

Did you ever compare notes with your brother? It must have been a very different Cornell that he went to.

ALEXANDER

No, not really. I mean, four years--

LASKEY

Yeah, but those four years, that was '29-- It came right in the middle of that.

ALEXANDER

No, I never did, from that standpoint. I just assumed life went on. [laughter]

LASKEY

It went on, but I would think it would have gone on very differently.

ALEXANDER

It could be. I just don't know. It sure went differently for me, I'll tell you.

LASKEY

Well, you mentioned that Beaux Arts Ball. Going to Cornell in the twenties, you were then going right as architectural styles were changing, as "modern architecture," quote unquote, was coming in. Did you go into the architecture school with any kind of a feeling about style?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

Were you even familiar with the modern movement?

ALEXANDER

Not a bit. As a matter of fact, I just figured, "If this is the way you do it, if you can learn it, I can learn it. If you go to an architectural school to become an architect, that's what I'm going to do." I had no ideas-- I remember hearing tales about what was going on at Yale [University] and figuring at one point, "Gee, I might transfer to Yale," because something was happening there. In my freshman year the school was dominated, from the standpoint of design, by the beaux arts. Every member of the faculty had been to the [Ecole des] Beaux-Arts or the landscape faculty had been Prix de Rome winners, and so forth. Everything was strictly classical; we learned to render the orders and that sort of thing. It started to loosen up when we had a visiting professor from Manhattan, Alexander Duncan Seymour, otherwise known as Alexander Drunken Seymour. [laughter]

LASKEY

Poor Mr. Seymour.

ALEXANDER

He and a young assistant professor started to put some life in the program. He was of the Paul [P.] Cret school, you might say. Paul Cret at the University of Pennsylvania and Otto Phaelton at Yale and somebody Morgan at NYU [New York University] and Alexander Seymour at Cornell were of the persuasion that classical forms were a must, but that we must introduce some fresh way to use thein--which they did. That was a breath of fresh air. I would say a hero at the time was-- [pause] The guy who designed the central library in L.A. and--

LASKEY

Oh, Bertram [G.] Goodhue.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, Bertram Goodhue was a hero at the time. We never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

I find that really interesting.

ALEXANDER

We had a hell of a fine library at the time. But [I] never heard about that guy until I--

LASKEY

How about the Bauhaus? Had that--?

ALEXANDER

That hadn't started, no. I mean, no news of it.

LASKEY

It had been around a bit.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. I don't doubt that there were other students, probably even at Cornell, who had a different experience. But I don't remember hearing about those guys.

LASKEY

But this was the education you were getting. It did not include references to Wright?

ALEXANDER

No .

LASKEY

How about the Chicago School with [Louis H.] Sullivan? Did you get that sort of thing?

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, yeah. However, there was a dramatic change over a period of five years from strict orders in beaux arts to beaux arts liberated, you might say. During my junior year, the summer of my junior year, I drove out to California with a fraternity brother who was also in architecture and who had to return to Pasadena. We lived at his house in Pasadena. He came back to get a job with his former boss, who was Marston.

LASKEY

Oh, Sylvanus Marston?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, who had been in partnership with [Garrett] Van Pelt. It was Marston, Van Pelt, and [Edgar] Maybury. Then Van Pelt split from Marston and Maybury and had an office in the same block on Euclid Street. I got a job with Van Pelt and so did John Porter Clark at a later date. He was the guy with whom I drove out to California. He's now in Palm Springs and has been an architect there since the middle of the Depression.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. John Porter Clark. Then I was offered a job if I would come back upon graduation. Furthermore, Van Pelt offered to show me around Europe. So my father bought a Model A Ford roadster, which we took across on the steamship Bremen.

LASKEY

Now, just a second. This was after you came here for the summer between your junior and senior year?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

You went back and--

ALEXANDER

That was the end of my fifth year.

LASKEY

The end of your fifth year. Then you went back for your fifth year and then went to Europe with Van Pelt after that?

ALEXANDER

The summer I graduated, 1930. I was there for three months.

LASKEY

What an opportunity.

ALEXANDER

Well, he knew Europe like the back of his hand, which was a fantastic opportunity. And so we went all over France, Spain, and Italy for three months. That was fabulous. I had a great experience there. Came back, worked here in Pasadena for Van Pelt for a year. I figured everything was just going fine. The Depression was on in the rest of the country, but I had a job. Then I went back East, got married, came back here three, four, or five months later. One Friday afternoon, every client in the office called and canceled. Van Pelt locked the door and that was it, and I was out on the street.

LASKEY

Oh, my goodness. This was about 1932?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

You went back to get married. Was this someone from New Jersey or someone from school?

ALEXANDER

No, it was someone that I had met on the trip out here in '28. She had come out having graduated from a ladies' college in Saratoga [Springs]. Swarthmore-- Not Swarthmore . [Skidmore College] Well, anyway, she had come out to join the community theater in Pasadena, which was famous.

LASKEY

Oh, the Pasadena Playhouse?

ALEXANDER

Right, it was famous at the time as a community theater. She found that it already had been corrupted by Hollywood into an organization that used mainly Hollywood people and was no longer the community theater that it had been. So then she decided to go back, and she and her mother and her sister booked passage on the steamship Virginia going through the Canal Zone, which I had also booked to get back. I met her there. Then she went to Cornell for an M.A. during my fifth year and then got a job teaching at Dickinson College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. That's where we were married, then flew out here.

LASKEY

Flew out here?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. That was crazy. We got to Salt Lake City and we were to change to Western Airlines at Salt Lake City. We waved good-bye to our plane that then went on to San Francisco and said, "Where's ours?" They said, "Well, you know, due to the Knute Rockne crash, all Ford trimotors have been grounded. So we're very sorry." I said, "Now what do we do?" So I rustled up a mail plane pilot who flew a plane-- Let's see, I don't remember the name of it now. But it had an open cockpit for the pilot and two staggered seats. The fuselage was so narrow that they couldn't get two seats next to each other. So it had staggered seats and open windows, if we wanted them open. I guess we could close them up, but he had his head in the breeze all the time.

LASKEY

You flew like that from--

ALEXANDER

Flew from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Los Angeles. I ate my box lunch, which made my wife throw up. [laughter] She was just deathly sick. So then when we came over the San Gorgonio Pass, I said, "Whew, look at those wonderful yuccas." She could have killed me.

LASKEY

What was your wife's name?

ALEXANDER

Marie Eugenie Therese Antoinette Vigneron Alexander. We had two kids together [Lynne M. Alexander and Timothy M. Alexander] . She pulled me through the Depression by getting a job teaching school at Westlake School for Girls in Pasadena--$100 a month for nine months, $900 a year. I earned a like amount in one year--$934 or something like that--sketching for Doug [Douglas] Honnold and getting little jobs here and there, digging ditches occasionally, getting jobs at United Artists studios in the art department and that sort of thing. And then we had a couple of kids. She went to USC [University of Southern California], got an M.A. in library science, and then became the librarian of the Library of Architecture and Allied Arts, which was an independent organization founded by the Allied Architects [of Los Angeles], who attempted to corner all the city and county business at one time, headed by [Edwin] Bergstrom.

LASKEY

I believe they did a master plan for the [Los Angeles] Civic Center. What else about them?

ALEXANDER

Well, they were sued by old Martin. What's his name? Albert [C] Martin, Sr. He sued successfully, so they had to disband. As part of their public relations gesture, they gave their library that they had assembled, set it up as a public institution with an endowment. It was in very bad shape after a period of years because the endowment just didn't take care of rising inflation and so on during the war. Anyway, she became their librarian and tried to get it in shape. Then on an occasion when I was back at Ann Arbor, Michigan, at a conference of architects and school administrators and educational publishers, I got the news that she had been killed by a Santa Fe train.

LASKEY

Oh, Mr. Alexander.

ALEXANDER

She was driving home from the library on Fletcher Boulevard and there was a grade crossing at that point. There was construction going on on Fletcher so that the cars were jammed up in a single line, and she was stranded in the middle of the tracks when the gates came down on both sides.

LASKEY

Oh, how horrible.

ALEXANDER

So that --

LASKEY

When was this?

ALEXANDER

I think it was '51. Then I became a member of the board of the library and determined to put it where it would be self-supporting and at the same time do everybody some good if they took advantage of it. And that became part of the UCLA library. I had conferences with [Franklin D.] Murphy, and we donated the library to UCLA and used the endowment, which is still in existence, to give the library a shot in the arm every year.

LASKEY

Is this the architecture library or the research library?

ALEXANDER

The Architecture [and Urban Planning] Library. It's part of it. I presume it's integrated. It should be by now. It was a library that was very heavily used by the movie industry at one time, the art departments in the movie industry. So it had quite a collection of things that you wouldn't find in a normal architectural library, things that had to do with decoration and with rug designs and all kinds of stuff. It also has some historic stuff in it.

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JULY 24, 1986

LASKEY

I want to go back just a little bit, Mr. Alexander, to the period when you first came out to Los Angeles and then you went back to the East and then you went to Europe. I'm wondering about all the influences of all these changes on you.

ALEXANDER

Well, I had worked in Manhattan for [Wallace K.] Harrison. It became Harrison and Abramovitz. This was the Harrison that was with [Harvey W.] Corbett and [William H.] MacMurray, the firm that was doing Rockefeller Center. So it was quite a change to work in an office in Pasadena that was doing nothing but residential work. It was all very well-designed residential work. At that time it was customary for the draftsman to be given the time to draw charcoal sketches full-size on the wall, for instance, of say a New Orleans grill and then to follow that through and go out to the iron worker, where he'd help the modeler make a clay or wax model of this thing and then see it cast in cast iron. That's something that no architect has a chance to do these days. It was really a marvelous experience.

LASKEY

Oh, yes.

ALEXANDER

Or to design as part of a total picture some large-scale vase, or whatever, as part of some Mediterranean house and then to make a full-size of it on the wall and then go around to the Greek sculptor who couldn't get jobs doing what he was taught to do in the old country but who would make a model of this thing. It was a five-foot-high thing that Sinbad the Sailor would be proud to jump out of.

LASKEY

Were they in the offices? You worked these out on the walls of the offices?

ALEXANDER

Well, I mean you put a piece of paper up first.

LASKEY

And then take them to the craftsman and say, "This is what I want," and you worked together.

ALEXANDER

So you really become involved. I mean you could become involved at that time in the hands-on experience of craftsmanship. You're not doing it; you're not trained to do it, but you get a piece of the action. So this was a very personally satisfying experience. Of course, going to Europe just blew my mind. I didn't expect to and didn't get a chance to do anything such as I had seen over there--that is, up to a certain point. But I was really given a great opportunity the very first year I came back. At that time it was quite customary for people to go to Pasadena for the winter, especially if they were from Chicago, or in this case Rochester, New York. Rochester, New York, can have an absolutely miserable winter if you're a certain age. I mean, when I was young I loved it, but, geez, what a place. So people would form the habit of coming out here every year. They'd go to, let's see, the Huntington Hotel or one of the hotels. (I have a story about that, by the way.) But this client that I'm thinking about was a shoe manufacturer named Mr. Stein or something--don't remember what it was. Anyway, I'd say he romanticized Mediterranean influence by the Arabs somehow or other: [mimics Eastern European accent] "Mr. Alexander, go down and look at the Green Hotel." There would be something in the lobby that he thought was terrific or there would be the dome on the roof: "Look at the dome, just what I want." Anyway, I had been to Majorca. I'd spent two weeks on Majorca. I just loved the place. I was given full speed ahead to design something for this guy, and it's still there. It's near the Huntington Hotel, which is no longer-- Is it shut down or--?

LASKEY

Well, it's--

ALEXANDER

Been condemned.

LASKEY

Well, it was, but they are protesting that.

ALEXANDER

Oh, good.

LASKEY

I think it's still operating, and there's a chance that it will continue as it is. At least, we hope so.

ALEXANDER

It was customary for a hotel in Pasadena-- Or I should say, several of the hotels bought quite a bit of land around them. And if somebody was a regular guest and would like to come out and build a house there, they could sell them a piece of property for a house. He could come over to the hotel for meals anytime he wanted, and so on and so forth. He knew everybody who came out every year the way he did. So that was part of the system. This guy bought a piece of property that went down to El Molino [Avenue] up to whatever that little winding street is there. I designed a fantasy there. The two gates, the gateposts I should say, have objects on top which you wouldn't believe. I was enchanted by-- What do you call them? They grow up by Castroville.

LASKEY

Oh, artichokes.

ALEXANDER

The form is like a pineapple, so regular and beautiful in such a pattern. I just became enthralled by that. I went down to the greengrocer and bought a couple of these artichokes and came back and designed artichokes about three feet high that go on top of these gateposts. And then the doorway has something I wouldn't be caught dead with now I guess--a fanciful sort of design. I don't know that it has a name. It's sort of a floral design that was done in emerald blue, or what do they call a stone that's blue?

LASKEY

Lapis.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, or the stuff from Arizona that the Indians use.

LASKEY

Oh, turquoise.

ALEXANDER

Turquoise-blue tile. It's sort of an elaborate flowing thing, just out of nothing. And it's still there.

LASKEY

This is around the doorway?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, around the doorway to the house. And this place was bought by [Isaac N.] Van Nuys, famous for Van Nuys in the [San Fernando] Valley. The reason I know it's still there is that I had a call from a young man who in partnership with another young man had bought this home, and I guess is living in it now. They wanted me to come around and tell them something about it. On the centennial year I was taken on a bus tour--I was supposed to talk about some things. And, by god, we went right past this thing. I don't know whether I got a chance to say anything about it or not, but it was on the tour. Nobody knew anything about it. It's just a "strangey."

LASKEY

Well, is it a whole house?

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

But it's done as a fantasy?

ALEXANDER

Well, I'd call it-- It came right out of Majorca from my standpoint. The entrance is through a patio and columns and corbels, which were nicely carved to my design. It was really fun to work on something like that, especially right out of school.

LASKEY

When you came out here and started working for [Garrett] Van Pelt, they dealt a lot, did they not, in Mediterranean houses and Mediterranean-style architecture?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah.

LASKEY

Was that new to you?

ALEXANDER

Not after that trip. Well, I knew something about it from the library at Cornell [University] , but it was quite new to think of doing a thing like that when I was there. Do you know where George Vernon Russell lives? Well, it's in Pasadena. It's off of Orange Grove [Boulevard], up a driveway. It used to be an estate belonging to this one house, but the house has been-- Stuff in front of it. It is, you know, multiple family now. But he bought this thing which was designed by Van Pelt's office--I participated in it--for a Mrs. Hill. I forget the background of Mrs. Hill, but she was very well-off. That's pretty typical of the really solid Mediterranean stuff that we were doing at the time. I designed fireplaces, mantles, and some of the outside. Well, the basic plan I think Van Pelt did, but John [Porter] Clark and I both worked on that one. John came to work for Van Pelt. Well, it was during the Depression; it happened all the time. There were three sisters-- What's the name Young in the movies? Three sisters, their last name is Young.

LASKEY

Loretta Young.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, there you go. Well, he designed Loretta Young's house right off of the UCLA campus, right across Sunset Boulevard from the UCLA campus up on a hill. It's a four-column, Georgian, two-story building.

LASKEY

It's still there.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. John designed that.

LASKEY

Did you work on that one at all?

ALEXANDER

I worked on some of the stuff, fireplaces, details.

LASKEY

Well, would your beaux-arts training from Cornell have helped you in this kind of architecture?

ALEXANDER

Oh, certainly. Sure. I still approach a serious design problem from the standpoint of balance. And the beaux-arts design training was actually a course in logic, the way it was taught, as I recall it. So that, regardless of the form, the approach was more or less the same.

LASKEY

Did you have to go through the charette? Was this part of the training?

ALEXANDER

Oh yes, yeah. Esquisse and esquisse-esquisse. The eight-hour project and the three-day project. And then you had to set down in one day what your basic concept was and then not deviate from that as you developed it over a two-week or ten-week period.

LASKEY

Did they give you the program and tell you and then you had to--?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. They give you the program. Then you sit down and develop an esquisse-esquisse, which was in sketch form. And if you departed from that you got an hors de concours (HC), or you could get an HC for being late. You'd get around to the last day and then work all day and night, sometimes two days and nights. And when we started, the first couple of years Cornell was part of a system in which we sent some of our projects, the best ones that were judged by our faculty, to a central place for judging. So that there was a competition between colleges, which had its healthy aspects, but which resulted really in paying too much attention to the presentation and not the content. It was abandoned the end of the second year I was there. But not the beaux-arts system.

LASKEY

How long did the beaux-arts system last?

ALEXANDER

Well, from a standpoint of teaching, I don't know how long it lasted. It was there all the time I was there. But they got away from the stiff rules and the intercollege competition, that sort of thing, which I think was under the circumstances a good idea.

LASKEY

As you moved West, did you find any other influences that were different approaches to architecture or design?

ALEXANDER

I didn't know a hell of a lot different from what I found out here, as a matter of fact. I had that one experience of working for a summer in Manhattan. I had worked one summer in my father's office, which was not at all architectural. But outside of that-- Well, I did become familiar with the whole elevator background. Corbett was the name of the head architect; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray was the firm. We were doing Rockefeller Center and had just started on the New York Life Insurance Company Building. The life insurance company had hired an efficiency expert by the name of Mr. Comfort, who was getting in the hair of Mr. Corbett. Mr. Corbett took me aside and said, "Now, I'm going to assign you to this man, and you just keep him occupied, will you?" [laughter] So I worked with this guy on permutations and combinations of how to deal with elevators. That is, whether you have a double-decked elevator that stops at two floors at once or whether you had two elevators operating at the same chamber at the same time. And what safety devices you have to have--how many feet a minute. Twelve hundred feet a minute, I think, was about as fast as they went at the time, I'm not sure. But I got a liberal dose of elevator lore: how you figure out where you're going to have express stops, how you handle express locals beyond that, and what is the most efficient way to handle the whole elevator deal. This is pretty far out compared to designing a little house out here, or a big house for that matter.

LASKEY

The elevator work that you were doing, was it actually in conjunction with the building of Rockefeller Center?

ALEXANDER

Oh no, this was the New York Life Building.

LASKEY

The New York Life Building. But the Rockefeller Center was being built at the same time. I guess that's the question that I'm trying to ask you and not phrasing very well. You're involved, and you see Rockefeller Center at one point on one side and then you have this sort of hacienda or Mediterranean style--they were such different life-styles. And you were a young man, and also the distances between the coasts were greater in 1930 than they are now. I'm just wondering--it sounds like it would have been exciting and challenging.

ALEXANDER

Well, I didn't have a development in depth in Manhattan from that standpoint. From the standpoint of surroundings, of course, I knew what an urban scene was. I was dumped into a country scene here, really. The architects with whom I worked here also had beaux-arts training, although they may not have actually gone to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. But they knew how the rich people for whom they designed houses liked to live--which is something to learn. A lot of people don't know today how they did like to live at that time. That is, this whole idea that came in with modern architecture, so-called, of opening up spaces so that there were no doors separating the kitchen-- In fact, the kitchen becomes part of the family room or the living room even. No such thing as a dining room in many of those designs. Dining space, this space, that space, and the other space all mashed into one. Whereas the idea of coming into a reception room where one is received if he has the right card when he comes to the door and puts it in the tray-- And if it is perfectly okay, then the door is opened again for him to come in. Then he must wait for admission into the parlor, if it's a formal thing. The whole idea of the formal dining room and the butler's pantry, which is a real pantry, and the kitchen and the place for the servants to eat and to live and all that sort of thing is foreign to our living these days. It was something that was foreign to me as far as my home was concerned, although we had a maid's room in the house. We never had a maid to speak of, maybe for a short time. But learning what was considered the good life was something that was necessary and interesting.

LASKEY

Well, Pasadena in particular wooed the upper class, or an upper-middle-class kind of resident.

ALEXANDER

Well, Van Pelt designed the McCormick place for instance. Coming out from Chicago to the [Henry E.] Huntington [Library and Art Gallery] year after year, you finally had to have a place right across the street from the Huntington of course. The thumbtack king, that was a [Sylvanus] Marston job that Jack Clark worked on. You know, the country club life at the time was something that has not been indulged in since.

LASKEY

Well, you had made a statement that I was looking for in talking about this period and the architects who were designing. You said that there was no way that they would ever design a house where the front door would open into the living room.

ALEXANDER

Right.

LASKEY

Which is exactly what you're saying. I think that describes so well the difference, this sort of elegance and formality of what I think of when I think of Mediterranean houses and what I think of as Southern California. Did you live in Pasadena when you were working out there?

ALEXANDER

Yes. I lived in several places, but for quite a while in a little cottage right off El Molino. Let's see, what's it called? Oak Knoll Gardens Drive, right off Oak Knoll [Avenue], or off El Molino near Oak Knoll. When I finally got some work in Los Angeles in [Reginald D.] Johnson's office and later with Wilson and Merrill, I used to take the red car in. This was one block from Lake [Street], where the red car ran. Then I moved to a little house out on San Gabriel Boulevard, which is on the east side of Pasadena, beyond, well, out Lombardy [Road].

LASKEY

Okay. I think of Lombardy as basically in San Marino.

ALEXANDER

Right, yeah. San Gabriel Boulevard runs right into San Marino, but it's Pasadena at that point. That was just before and after the war started. Then I moved to Baldwin Hills Village and lived there for nine years. For fifteen years I lived in Pasadena.

LASKEY

When Mr. Van Pelt closed his office door that Friday afternoon, what did you do?

ALEXANDER

Well, John Clark and I were both looking for something to do--preferably to get paid for doing. So Colorado Boulevard and Lake were just desolate looking. A whole department store had closed down. The store windows were drab and oh so sad looking. Everything had come to a standstill. Came to the bank holiday-- For instance, I had a savings account. I'd been putting something in this savings account religiously every week. It was the only bank that failed to open after the bank holiday. Anyway, here's this miserable-looking street, and we thought, "Well, we could maybe persuade these people to jazz things up. They have these vacant windows and they look terrible. So let's get a job window decorating." I guess maybe we got two jobs for very little pay, if any. That just didn't fly. Then another friend of mine was C. Hunt Lewis III. He and I had both worked in Johnson's office for a little bit. He had graduated from Princeton [University]. Or had he? I think so. He was married to Rosemary Street Lewis. Her father was Julian Street. You know of him?

LASKEY

No, I don't.

ALEXANDER

Author for the New Yorker. Well, anyway. Hunt Lewis and I-- Here was Prohibition just going out, people were stocking up on wine. Let's design some wine-cellar accessories. [laughter] Well, you know there's not much money in it. Maybe we had a couple of jobs, but we couldn't make a go of it. I had maybe two or three weeks working for Reggie Johnson on a house that was already under construction. It was a luxurious palace, costing $2 million at the time, for Seeley [G. ] Mudd in Pasadena.

LASKEY

It was in Pasadena?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Johnson had a superb chief draftsman and a couple of great designers, one of whom was a Cornell man whom I had known, Cooney [M.] Cameron. Carpenter was the other designer, wore a smock, good old French style. I worked on paneling in some grand room or other and came to the end of the employment. Johnson said, "Well, now, why don't you go around and see if Frank Hodges, the contractor, can use your help. You might get some contracting and construction experience." So Frank Hodges sent me around to see his foreman. His foreman rubbed his hand in glee to see this lily- fingered character looking for a job. So the first job-- It turned out that the day before, Mr. Mudd had been on the job and he had gone down into the little tiny basement they had, which was just a partial basement big enough for the heating system. He looked up over the retaining wall and said, "Well, now, that looks rather untidy in there, don't you think, Mr. Hodges?" Mr. Hodges said, "Yes, it is rather untidy. What would you like?" He said, "Well, I'd like to have it very tidy." This thing covered what seemed like an acre, you know, and the only access to this underspace under the house was one access port in the center of this concrete floor. There were concrete beams that came down within eighteen inches of the dirt. And the game was that some Mexicans would take wheelbarrow loads of pea gravel, very small, fine gravel, and dump it down this access hole, and another Mexican and I would get under there and get this pea gravel and spread it around two inches deep over the whole thing. We'd have to get it out from where they were dumping it down in quantity first, and then get a two-by- four and screed it until it was two inches deep over the whole damn thing. Well, for two weeks I did this until I couldn't stand up straight. [laughter]

LASKEY

I was going to say, I'm surprised that you could even maneuver. I would think you had to be using muscles you hadn't ever used.

ALEXANDER

It was absolutely crazy. It was insane. So at the end of two weeks Seeley Mudd comes along with another grand idea. By that time they had framed up to the second floor, and he says, "Now, is this my bedroom?" We said, "Yes." He says, "Is that a bathroom right next door to it? Won't I hear the plumbing?" I mean, it's his own goddamned plumbing you know. [laughter]

LASKEY

He had seen the plans to the house before?

ALEXANDER

Mr. Hodges says, "Yes, Mr. Mudd, you probably will." "I think we should have some sound insulation in that wall, don't you?" "Oh yes, Mr. Mudd. " So at that time there was no such thing as bats of glass wool, something nice and clean like that to put up with paper on one side. But you got burlap sacks of spun glass. Then you were to pack this into the wall. Well, I think we were given masks, so that helped a little bit so we didn't get, what do you call it, from glass in the lungs. But I had little pieces of glass sticking me in my ear and down my back and unmentionable places all over. I just couldn't get rid of it with a shower or anything else for another two weeks packing glass wool.

LASKEY

How could they get anybody to do that? I mean, that sounds like a job that could literally kill you.

ALEXANDER

I told Seeley Mudd about this years later when I was a consulting architect at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] and he wanted to locate an astronomy building that he wanted to finance. This was just before he died. Well, he was amused, but he didn't remember it. [laughter]

LASKEY

All the havoc that he wrought and he didn't even remember it. Was that the end of your construction career?

ALEXANDER

Well, no, I did some more ditchdigging on occasion for brief periods. Actually, one really good experience I had from the standpoint of understanding how things are put together--which we did not learn in college the way some do at San Luis Obispo [California Polytechnic State University] these days, or they have in the past years--was just how two-by-fours are put together to make things work. I had a friend who lived adjacent to the Valley Hunt Club, Harlan [B.] Robinson. His mother was living alone, or I guess he was living there with her at the time, and it was only a few blocks from the Huntington Memorial Hospital. She had an idea to bring in some extra income. She needed a garage. She wanted a two-car garage with an apartment attached to it that she could rent to a nurse. So she wanted me to design it. Well, it was great. She had a very big heart and was a grand lady. I think she sympathized with my plight, but in any event I got a little money for designing this thing. Then she said, "Well, now that you have it designed, how about building it?" I said, "Oh my god, I don't know anything about that." She said, "Well, you think it over." So that night I had a friend, a Cornell architect who was then studying sculpture at USC [University of Southern California], "Bill Berk, the jerk from Albuquerque"-- He came over and we had a little music going on. By that time I had accumulated six ocarinas of various sizes, from a little soprano ocarina to a bass ocarina. He had developed what he called a stomach pump, which was a five-and-ten-cent-store flute with a long length of rubber tubing that he'd put around his neck and blow. He'd put the flute on the floor and play it. So we had a couple of numbers and I mentioned this opportunity, which I thought was scary. He said, "Oh no, I know all about that stuff. My father has all the tools. He'll lend [them to] us." He said, "Don't worry, we can do that." Well, I didn't know it, but he didn't know much more about it than I did, but he had balls and the tools. Of course, I didn't have any tools or anything like that. We even rented a little cement mixer that was like a coffee pot, but would break down right in the middle of everything. Well, anyway, we decided we would try it. He brought the tools along and he taught me how things go together. By doing it myself and building a whole little house without any outside help-- Furthermore, we got about halfway through this-- He always had crazy ideas. He was married; he and Suzanne had heard about a wonderful opportunity to go around the world and make their money doing it. This was [the idea of] a guy who thought he was a millionaire. He inherited quite a bit of money and he had bought a sailing vessel, the Eastern Star or something like that, in San Francisco harbor. He was outfitting this thing and he was rounding up a group of artists of various kinds: a sculptor, a writer to chronicle the whole thing, this, that, and the other--a painter too. They were going to take a sail around the world and going to do all these things that would make money to support it, and in the meantime he'd finance them. So Bill, all of a sudden right in the middle of our construction project, went sailing off to San Francisco to build their quarters on the boat, which they did. But then, unfortunately, the guy who owned the boat turned out not to be a millionaire, but to have had what money he inherited go to his head. So he thought he was a millionaire. So that didn't work out. But in the meantime I was left holding the sack with this house half completed. So I finished it. That intimate contact with having to do certain things, to put two-by-fours together and to make the house work, really freed me a great deal from the fear I had of tools and the fear I had of wondering how-- You know, looking at copybooks is one thing, but getting your hands on it and doing it is another. So that was really good construction experience--as tiny as it was. It's been torn down since, by the way.

LASKEY

Oh, that's too bad.

ALEXANDER

A couple of my things have been torn down. Parkinson [and Bergstrom; later Parkinson and Parkinson], who was a big firm here at one time.

LASKEY

Donald Parkinson?

ALEXANDER

Right.

LASKEY

John and —

ALEXANDER

Well, it was father and son.

LASKEY

Yeah, John and Don.

ALEXANDER

I knew both, but when the old man had died-- Donald had a client, G. Schirmer, who turned out sheet music. Mr. Schirmer wanted a store in Los Angeles, and it was a little job from Parkinson's standpoint. I had several occasions like this when an architect didn't want to take on the obligation of having a permanent employee, but he had a job that he wanted done. I had several cases where I was employed like that. Just to come in and do the whole thing: "I don't want to hear a thing. Take care of the client, get it built, and get it out of here." So I designed this one-story store in downtown Los Angeles. I forget exactly where it was now, but right near Pershing Square. It was quite urbane. And that's been torn down.

LASKEY

It wasn't about, oh, say, somewhere near Hope [Street] and Ninth [Street] or in that area?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

Because for years there was a music store that sold sheet music.

ALEXANDER

This was like Sixth [Street] .

LASKEY

Oh, really next to Pershing Square.

ALEXANDER

Probably some other things have been torn down that I don't know about. I just thought of those two. Another one that may have been torn down similar to that: Palmer Sabin had his office right next to Arroyo [Boulevard] and California Street and Roland [E.] Coate [formerly of Johnson, Kaufman, and Coate] also had his office there. Palmer Sabin, when I was looking for a job. said, "You know, I have this little project for the school board of San Marino, which is an auditorium, and I'd like you to handle the whole thing." There I did the plans and the specifications and saw it get underway. That was right on Huntington Boulevard. I don't know whether it's there still or not, but it was a little auditorium, pretty superficially classic. The most interesting thing about it was that a friend of Palmer's, also in that same little complex with Palmer Sabin and Roland Coate, was a contractor who had patents on something called lattice steel, in which he would erect a sort of basket of very, very light steelwork and put a paper core, a reinforced paper core inside so that it was hollow, and blast it with Gunite from the outside--that is, pneumatically blown concrete, very dense. This was the construction of the thing. What's the name of the guy? [Fritz Ruppel] He was a very interesting character. He did the reconstruction of one of the missions south of here, San Luis Key I think, in Oceanside. [He] developed a brick that looked like an adobe brick in size, scale, and so forth, specially for this job. well, anyway, that's a diversion. Where were we? [laughter]

LASKEY

We were talking about some of your buildings that had been torn down in San Marino, and having talked about Palmer Sabin and Roland Coate.

ALEXANDER

Everything is a diversion.

LASKEY

Well, not always. Did you do anything else for the Parkinsons in downtown Los Angeles? Were you involved in anything that went up on Spring Street?

ALEXANDER

No, no. I got to know the old boy before he died, though. He had come from Canada.

LASKEY

This was John, the father.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. He'd come from Canada, and when he first arrived there was a building boom on here. All of the lumber, of course, was coming down from the Northwest by ship. When it arrived, it was not only green, but it was full of sea water. And maybe-- How long have you lived here?

LASKEY

Almost thirty years.

ALEXANDER

Okay, then you may remember at the foot of Bunker Hill, across from the [Los Angeles Central] Library, there were some five- and six-story tenements of wood.

LASKEY

Across from the library?

ALEXANDER

Well, this side--

LASKEY

Well, across from Hill Street, across from [Grand] Central Market.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, correct. Yeah, yeah. Well, not only there but on the other side of the hill there were these five- or six-story walk-ups in wood. Well, he had designed those when he first came from Canada.

LASKEY

Parkinson did?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. It was his introduction to Los Angeles. I mean, it was a building boom--boom, boom, boom. This was probably 1910. Anyway, he was a careful man, and he got out a transit and measured the thing when it was built. I forgot how many months later, it was nine inches shorter in height. And this is not supposed to happen to Douglas fir. I mean, everything's supposed to be--

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JULY 24, 1986

ALEXANDER

I remember that scene. When he was telling that story, it seems to me it was at the Pierpont Davis house. Pier Davis, Dave [David J.] Witmer, [Edwin] Bergstrom--the group of people who were in what was called Allied Architects [of Los Angeles] . We were in tuxedos at his house. I don't know where we had come from, but I remember he told me that it's ridiculous to wear these fancy shirts with a tuxedo. A tuxedo, after all, is a dinner jacket, you just wear an ordinary white shirt. When it comes to formal wear with tails, that's something else, but don't give me this stiff -shirt business. I mean, you wear that to dinner, for heaven's sake, every night.

LASKEY

Of course, of course. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

That was the group when--

LASKEY

Now, when was this, or is this the same period we've been talking about?

ALEXANDER

Well, I'll tell you, when I got into working with Dave Witmer-- Let's see, the war hadn't started yet. [pause] But maybe it had. Oh, I know. It was after I went back to visit my family at Spring Lake. I had sent my wife [Eugenie Vigneron Alexander] and daughter [ Lynne M. Alexander] back ahead of me. I was working with Wilson and Merrill. And our last active job in the office was converting an opera house in Bakersfield into a [Twentieth Century] Fox West Coast theater. That came almost to a close under construction and I was free to take a vacation. So I was going to just take a two-week vacation in Spring Lake. I went back with a fishing rod, white ducks, and tennis shoes, and that's about all.

LASKEY

Your white tux?

ALEXANDER

No, no, white ducks.

LASKEY

You travel for every occasion. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

I just expected to stay two weeks, instead of which, just before I was to come back, I thought I'd visit Clarence [S.] Stein in New York City. He had been our consulting architect on Baldwin Hills Village. He never came out here that I recall during that period, but he did keep us on the track by correspondence. He was just a delightful gentleman. So I went in just to call on him, and he said, "Hey, by the way, while you're here why don't you get some experience in large-scale housing?" I said, "Well, why don't I?" He said, "Well, tell you what. You know Richmond Shreve, " who was the architect of the Empire State Building. He was a Cornell architect. He said, "Just tell him you're from Cornell--I mean you were educated at Cornell--and that you'd like a job on this thing that they're working on down at Metropolitan Life [Insurance Company], [at] the Metropolitan board of design. He's chairman of the board of design. They're designing the largest housing project in the world, 2,275 apartments," or whatever it was. It became Parkchester. That was the name of it. And so I went down to see Shreve, and he said, "Oh, sure, we need some people. We're hiring right now." This being still in the Depression era, it sounded good to have something going on like that, really active. So I went down to Union Square and the Metropolitan building, where the drafting building was, and I was hired on. I said, "I'd just like to have some experience for a couple of months." He says, "Well, we'd like to have you aboard." So at the end of the month I was told that "If you commit to stay for six months, we'll give you a raise and you do this." Then at the end of another month, he said, "If you agree to stay for a year, we'll give you this responsibility and increase your pay." So I did. I was there for the whole damn year, unexpectedly.

LASKEY

This was about in 1937, 1938.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, I think. My Social Security card, the first one I ever had, I think it's '38. Yeah. Well, I came back from that to Los Angeles to find that my partner Wilson had become a joint-venture partner on several teams in public housing.

LASKEY

Just to back up a little bit, who was Wilson?

ALEXANDER

Lou Wilson, Louis Eugene Wilson, was the older brother of the Wilson who founded a very extensive practice here. And what was his name? Wilson, another Wilson. [tape recorder off] Adrian Wilson's firm [Adrian Wilson and Associates] blossomed during the Vietnam War, doing a lot of work overseas that I didn't care for very much. Over a period of years, I had a lot of, not bitter, but I was in a feud with Adrian. But it wasn't really all that bad. I didn't like what I considered his principles to be, whereas his brother I thought--well, I know--was an entirely different kind of character. Lou Wilson was a go-getter businessman and architect from Kansas. He had gone into partnership with Edwin Merrill, who was a well- trained architect, a graduate of MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] . But Merrill was stone-deaf, very close to stone-deaf and disabled that way in practice. But a real student and a great technical man, not a designer--neither one was. Well, Lou had--

LASKEY

Well, what was his expertise then?

ALEXANDER

Getting business.

LASKEY

Oh, okay.

ALEXANDER

And just a wonderful human being- -good, sociable guy. He had, in 1934 or '33-- Yeah, in 1934 he had rounded up ten contracts. He had the contracts signed and wanted to get these houses designed. And that was when Reg Johnson referred him to me. That was the first so- called steady job that I had. It wasn't very steady, because as soon as I got my license that year I demanded partnership. Of course they'd be delighted to have me as a partner, which meant that I didn't get paid at all.

LASKEY

This was what, 1932?

ALEXANDER

' Thirty- four .

LASKEY

'Thirty- four, okay.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. I mean sometimes I didn't get paid at all. Anyway, I had to share in their ill or good fortune, whatever. Well, I came back to find that Lou had entered these joint ventures without any reference to my being a partner of our firm of Wilson, Merrill, and Alexander.

LASKEY

What's a joint venture?

ALEXANDER

Well, that is a one-time partnership for that specific job only. It's the same as a partnership except it's not extensive, it doesn't cover everything. It covers that one particular thing. It's a venture that is entered into jointly by one or more firms. President Roosevelt's policy at that time was in any one of these things, such as the public housing program, if you were to engage in architecture you must spread the work. So that no public housing project should be designed by one architect only. You must have three or four, at least three.

LASKEY

You know, I never realized that. That's why there are always several firms connected with any public housing project.

ALEXANDER

At that time that's true.

LASKEY

I didn't know that.

ALEXANDER

That was not true later on under the postwar [Harry S.] Truman effort, but it was true during the Depression. So I found that he had been a member of more than one of these groups without involving me. I said to myself, "Well, two can play at that game." So that's when I went to see Walter [W.] Alley, who was the head of the staff of the [Los Angeles City] Housing Authority at the time, as to which architects were not involved and what potential projects might there be. And at that time the housing authority had no money and no resources to do all of the work that it took to have the city council declare an area subject to redevelopment or, I should say, qualified for public housing. The architect was expected to sort of pioneer that and provide a study free of charge.

LASKEY

With your own time, with your own money?

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I found that Dave Witmer, who had been chief architect of the FHA [Federal Housing Administration] and had resigned from that to design a project parallel to Baldwin Hills Village--

LASKEY

In Los Angeles?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right next to the public housing project I was part of. You know, where the murals are.

LASKEY

Oh, Estrada Courts.

ALEXANDER

Estrada Courts, okay, right near the Sears [Roebuck and Company] headquarters.

LASKEY

Okay.

ALEXANDER

Wyvernwood it was called. Wyvernwood. He was architect of Wyvernwood. So he was in the housing game. I went to see him, and he said, "Well, I don't have the time to promote this thing, but if you'll promote it, count me in." I said, "We've got to have three at least." He said, "Well, a friend of mine. Wink [Winchton] Risley, is not involved in any other team, so let's make a team." So we made a team, and then I did all the legwork that it took to qualify this thing and get it before the city council and get it approved. Then we were designing this thing. And prior to this time Witmer had been engaged by-- It was Witmer and [Loyal F.] Watson. Witmer and Watson had been engaged by [John] Griffith and [Herbert C] Legg. Griffith was a rich entrepreneur from Pasadena and Legg was the former county supervisor, who became a county supervisor again after that. In the interim, he got into the housing game. They had acquired an option on a big piece of the Montana Ranch down at Lakewood. It's now the city of Lakewood .

LASKEY

Oh, down near Long Beach.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, near Long Beach. They had acquired this acreage, and Witmer and Watson were involved as architects. And Witmer needed somebody to lay out 2,400 houses, lots, so on and so forth. So he asked me to do that. I was working in his office but on a piecemeal basis. One day he got a telephone call from Washington, D.C., from Mr. Bergstrom, who had been president of the AIA [American Institute of Architects] nationally.

LASKEY

Was that the Bergstrom of Parkinson and Bergstrom out here, Henry Bergstrom?

ALEXANDER

Right, right. Bergstrom called him in his office. Dave came out of the office, went over to me, and said, "I've just been asked to go to Washington and I might do it. If I do, will you go into partnership with us?" I said, "Sure." So what it was-- Bergstrom had been, as president of the AIA, asked to be the chief architect of designing the Pentagon. Because he had been, I think, simply careless about not getting authorization for certain funds, that he didn't put in his pocket, but he had been a naughty boy with AIA funds, I guess--

LASKEY

Oh, I see.

ALEXANDER

--in the eyes of the profession. And he had been asked to step down and had been asked to get out of the Pentagon job. And so he had asked Dave to take his place. Dave became chief architect of the Pentagon and rounded up architects--that ' s where I got [to know] such people as Pier Davis and other characters who had worked in the Allied Architects and had a beaux-arts slant--to go back and work on the Pentagon with him. That's the way I got to know these guys.

LASKEY

Oh, I see.

ALEXANDER

Such as Parkinson and--

LASKEY

Well, first of all, I'm curious, did you ever ask Wilson why he didn't include you in--?

ALEXANDER

I don't know whether I did or not.

LASKEY

It isn't something that you remember or seem to think important.

ALEXANDER

No, no, no. He was more or less going his way, and I thought, "Well, what the hell, I'll go mine too."

LASKEY

Were you particularly interested in public housing?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes, from an emotional and political standpoint. Oh, yeah. I was up to my ears in it and maintained that interest over a period of years, right through after the war when the vets came back. We had two successive statewide propositions for state public housing. I was active statewide with Katherine Bauer and Hal [Harold F.] Wise and the public housing establishment. And I always went to the conventions in Washington on public housing. I got to know Charlie [Charles] Abrams, who was one of the first public housers in New York City, a lawyer, and Strauss. I don't know, just anybody who was in the public housing game at that time, including Clarence Stein and Henry Churchill of Philadelphia. And in Washington, D.C., it was Louis Justement. He wrote New Cities for Old. Anyway, yes I was very much concerned. My interest went right through to a time when after the war I was working on these statewide campaigns. Of course, I was really right up against the real estate lobby. I was a prominent part of it because I was president of the [Los Angeles City] Planning Commission at a time when these campaigns were going on. I was outspoken and debated Fritz Burns in front of town hall and would go out into the lion's mouth, the Wilshire real estate, whatever it was, real estate organization, to speak to them. I went all over the state speaking in favor of public housing. The opposition was as ruthless as they could be without murdering people. On one occasion-- I forget the name of the housing organization there [Citizens Housing Council] . Father O'Dwyer was an active member of the board, as I was. I found that a sympathizer with our cause had gotten a job as a secretary in the opposition's camp, which was run by a couple of ruthless bastards who ran political campaigns. She would send is copies of memos, intraoffice memos, that were outrageous, about how they were going to get this Alexander. "Get his boss." Then the note would come back, "Well, he doesn't have a boss." "Okay, get [Fletcher] Bowron to fire him." Well, Bowron, the mayor at the time, was very sympathetic with my position. But as long as I said by disclaimer every time I spoke that I was not speaking for the city administration or for the planning commission but on my own, he said, "Just go right ahead. [I'll] back you up anytime." So I was called in these memos "Red" Alexander, because the idea was that if you're for public housing that you're naturally a communist.

LASKEY

Of course.

ALEXANDER

Well, where were we?

LASKEY

How did you develop an interest in public housing?

ALEXANDER

Well, in the first place, I had never had the experience of poverty before the Depression. I remember standing in line when I found out that at a certain point my family was without food and that you could get food by coming down to some place that was in a department store in Pasadena. [Nash's]

LASKEY

This is your family out here, your immediate family?

ALEXANDER

Yes . I just had a wife and a daughter, but we didn't have any food in the house, and I'd run out of money and she'd run out of money. So I went down and I stood in line. Well, I got up to the window and backed away--I couldn't do it. So we went hungry. And this affected me deeply. And it turned me from what you might call an inherited Republican to a wild-eyed, fiery liberal, if not a communist. I never joined the Communist Party, but I undoubtedly rubbed shoulders with plenty of them. And anybody who didn't question our economic system at the time was dead between the ears. So I was all for Upton Sinclair's EPIC [End Poverty in California] and all kinds of other crazy ideas. Anyway, I got to know the real scene of the way people were living at that time. And even though the slums of New York were famous as slums, we had slums right here right next to the city hall--within view of city hall. I got grand tours of these places and talked to the people. And nothing was being done to ameliorate that situation, so I just became a part of the movement to get something done.

LASKEY

Public housing was a new concept then, wasn't it?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

That came out of the late Depression?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. The first public housing project in Manhattan Island was a result of this. Charlie Abrams told me about it. They-- How was it? Some buildings were torn down and there were a lot of toilets and steel bars and this, that, and the other thing. Junk that they were going to just take out and dump in the ocean. He said, "Well, now, wait a minute. If you're going to get rid of it anyway, may we have it?" And they started their first public housing by using junk to put it together. It was better than the tenements that had been built with, you know, a cold-water tap on the floor and you go outside to a privy. Well, the conditions here, even though on the surface-- In Watts, for instance, superficially one-story high, little, innocent bungalows, you go back in the alley-- and It was all built with alleys in that area--and what had been little garages with dirt floors had become living quarters. Well, anyway, I--

LASKEY

So you had a commitment to public housing, an emotional commitment. Whether Wilson would have been involved or anything, this is something you would have gotten involved in.

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, sure.

LASKEY

It was then a federal program?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

Through what agency?

ALEXANDER

We tried to create a state program prior to the federal program, but that didn't work. The real estate lobby beat us. But yes, it was a federal program. And after these unsuccessful state things came along, that put me in the public eye. And to everybody's amazement, this new little president got his public housing bill through. Nobody would believe it because, that is, in California the real estate lobby had put up so much flak about socialism and communism and so on and so forth. When Truman got his public housing bill into law, locals just couldn't believe it. And then I was supposedly the fair-haired boy of the movement .

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 2, 1986

LASKEY

Mr. Alexander, you came to California permanently in the summer of 1930, right after the end of the Roaring Twenties and the very beginning of the Depression. You went to Pasadena and you worked with what we would call the gentlemen architects of Pasadena. What was that like?

ALEXANDER

Now, before I start, you remind me that we ended the last session with a question about what I remember most about Pasadena at that time or Southern California. I would say there were two things that impressed me most: the ever-present mountains hanging over the Los Angeles plain, and they were quite visible all the time, and the other thing was the beaches. During the Depression I did a great deal of surf-fishing from Santa Barbara to Lower California, below Ensenada, and this vast stretch of beach was also very impressive. And as for the architects, I think I mentioned that I set up house next to Roland [E.] Coate's sister and that, plus the fact that he was a graduate of Cornell [University] .

LASKEY

Roland Coate was also indirectly responsible for your being out here, wasn't he?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

Wasn't he the one who was the sponsor of John Porter Clark?

ALEXANDER

No. No. John Porter Clark's boss was Sy [Sylvanus] Marston.

LASKEY

Marston, I'm sorry.

ALEXANDER

Sy was very, very traditional in his approach to architecture. Roland Coate was quite a bit younger, and he was always searching for a fresh means to express the relationship of the early California scene to architecture that he was designing at the time. So that I think he was the one who made the so-called Monterey style an important one. He went up and took photographs of the Monterey custom house and residences there and popularized the transition to using the long balcony on the second floor on the front of the house in places where it had no meaning at all except that it was obviously a style of some kind. It was a combination of the ship carpenters that came around the Horn dealing with the adobe they found here and using wood sparingly but to good effect. Roland also sought out some real ranch houses, which were few and far between at that time. One of them that he directed me to see was the ranch headquarters at Santa Margarita Ranch. Santa Margarita Ranch was bought at the beginning of the Second World War by the military, by the United States to serve as the Marine Corps training base, which it still is. Camp Pendelton. That was the largest [California] ranch intact at that time.

LASKEY

Did you know that that was the ranch house that Cliff [M.] May grew up in?

ALEXANDER

He grew up in it?

LASKEY

Yes, that was his family's- -he spent his summers there. His aunt lived there.

ALEXANDER

I'll be darned. I didn't know that. Well, one thing I remember that Roland experimented with, or demonstrated in the house that he built for himself, was the traditional Spanish-influenced house built around the central patio. And instead of having screen doors leading out to the patio, which are always a damned nuisance and come apart before their time, he put a screen dome covering over the entire patio, so that you had the freedom from insects and so forth and lots of glass doors leading out to the patio.

LASKEY

This would have been in the early thirties?

ALEXANDER

Yes . I don't know how-- When you say early thirties--

LASKEY

Oh, before 1935.

ALEXANDER

Yes, that's right. Yeah.

LASKEY

Well, did you feel that the Monterey style was not indigenous to Southern California, which was why you feel it really didn't work here?

ALEXANDER

Oh no, I meant to say that the typical second- floor balcony was developed for the street scene in Monterey, where people could sit out on the balcony and talk to the people going by either riding horseback or in carriages, have polite conversation from the second floor without getting themselves down to the first floor, which was all horse manure and mud.

LASKEY

[laughter] So it was a very urban--

ALEXANDER

Yes, it was a device that was quite popular, I think, on that account. It looked the same, but it didn't serve the same purpose when it was translated to a house with a setback on California Street in Pasadena, that sort of thing.

LASKEY

Well, the Pasadena architects that we're talking about worked a lot in Spanish style, didn't they?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

Did you work with Wallace Neff at all?

ALEXANDER

No. I admired some of his work very much. Of course, some of it is quite-- Well, all architecture is influenced mainly by the clientele, and when he got a Hollywood clientele a lot of his work became fantasy, which is fun, but-- I met him several times, but I didn't know him well. Reg [Reginald D.] Johnson, of course, I got to know very well, especially through our association in Baldwin Hills Village. Palmer Sabin had an office in the same complex as Roland Coate, at the corner of California Street and what's now Arroyo Boulevard.

LASKEY

You were working for [Garrett] Van Pelt and [Edgar] Maybury, is that right?

ALEXANDER

I was working for Van Pelt. Van Pelt split from Marston and Maybury before I came out here in 1928. They were disassociated in, I suppose, 1927.

LASKEY

Where was your office?

ALEXANDER

Van Pelt's office was in a new building on North Euclid [Avenue] almost at the corner of Green Street and Euclid in Pasadena. And that was, oh, almost adjacent to an older building where Marston and Maybury had their office. So that when I came out here in the summer of 1928, my friend John Clark went back to work, of course, with Marston and Maybury and I got a job right next door with Van Pelt.

LASKEY

And were you working mostly on residential?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, that's almost all that both firms were involved in.

LASKEY

And they were involved in very traditional architecture?

ALEXANDER

Yes .

LASKEY

And architecture for the elite?

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

So that was quite a major jump when you got involved in Baldwin Hills Village.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

How did you get from Pasadena to Baldwin Hills?

ALEXANDER

Well, for the first five years of the thirties, hardly any new buildings were being designed or built. And jobs that I could get in architectural work were few and far between. On at least a couple of occasions, maybe two or three, I had brief engagements in Reginald Johnson's office, which was in Los Angeles, in the city, although he lived in Pasadena. Each engagement would be for maybe just a couple of weeks with a long dry period in between. After one of those engagements, Lou [Louis E.] Wilson, architect of Wilson and Merrill, asked Johnson to recommend somebody as a designer, because he had signed up some ten clients for residential work and didn't feel capable of handling it and needed help. And Johnson recommended me. So I started out designing ten houses for Wilson and Merrill. During that period in 1934, I finally got enough work in architects' offices to get my license. And the minute I had my license, I demanded partnership, which was in a way a mistake. Maybe I mentioned that before, did I?

LASKEY

You didn't mention it in detail.

ALEXANDER

Well, it meant that I didn't necessarily get an hourly wage.

LASKEY

This was in 1934, so were any architects getting an hourly wage at that time?

ALEXANDER

Oh, sure. Anybody who was an employee got it or he could raise hell about it, but if you're a partner you--

LASKEY

Well, I guess basically what I'm saying is were architects being employed at this time?

ALEXANDER

Well, to some extent, but not very much. The engagement was very light,

LASKEY

I think you had written somewhere that in five years, from 1930 to 1935, more construction was destroyed by fire in the U.S. than new construction was built. Did that apply in Southern California as well?

ALEXANDER

Oh, sure, sure. And during that period, up to that period I should say, I had been reading quite a bit in the field of architecture and planning and the relationship of buildings to buildings and buildings to the community. And I became very much interested in large-scale housing, especially for low-income people. That is, I looked at what I had been doing in working in Johnson's office, for instance on the-- The last one was the Seeley [G. ] Mudd house, I think. And the W. A. [William Andrews] Clark house in Santa Barbara, things like that. And I decided that any mission, what I would try to concentrate on in my career, would not be single-family, custom-designed houses but that I would try to tackle housing as a social and economic problem. There was a great deal of discussion among architects at that time of slum clearance and housing for the masses and that sort of thing. That became a major interest. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I know we discussed this in the office of Wilson and Merrill, later to become Wilson, Merrill, and Alexander.

LASKEY

Where were the offices of Wilson, Merrill, and Alexander? In Pasadena?

ALEXANDER

No, they were in the Petroleum Securities building, which was the Doheny Building on Olympic [Boulevard] and Figueroa [Street]. It's still there. There was a great deal in the architectural press, a great deal of discussion countrywide about housing as a social and economic problem. Lou Wilson was very long on energy and weak on prestige, and he was interested in developing some type of large-scale housing under the new laws that had just been passed for setting up the FHA [Federal Housing Administration] , under the rules of the limited-dividend corporations espoused by the FHA. So he-- that is, Wilson--found a site that he thought was adaptable. I think it was on Exposition Boulevard. And he got Johnson interested in joint venturing their architectural services, and in turn Johnson got a contractor interested. The contractor was Joshua Marks, I think that's right, from Marks Shardee. Johnson had his office in the architects' building, which is now the location of Richfield Center at the corner of Figueroa and Fifth Street. And Marks had his office in the same building. Marks was a San Franciscan who had come to Los Angeles to represent [Alfred B.] Swinerton, a contractor whose name is still associated with a company in San Francisco, Lindgren and Swinerton, which is still in business. And Lindgren and Swinerton had been selected to build the Santa Anita racetrack. The Santa Anita racetrack had been built on land previously owned by the Baldwin estate, [Elias J.] Baldwin having been one of the silver barons who struck it rich in Nevada, then went to Southern California and bought a vast ranch. And part of that ranch was used, eventually, to build this big racetrack. So Marks came down to supervise the racetrack contruction. He got to know the Baldwin estate heirs, and the manager of the estate was Ray Knisley. So the three, Wilson and Johnson and Marks, got together on this site that Wilson had first identified, and they found that that wouldn't work out for some reason, which I don't recall. But Marks said, "Hey, the Baldwin estate still owns a lot of property out at Baldwin Hills. It's a great big rabbit warren. They just raise sheep on the hills--there ' s nothing there. I bet they'd be interested in promoting some housing to start to develop their land. " So they went together to see Ray Knisley, and Ray Knisley became very much interested and did designate something like two hundred acres at the foot of Baldwin Hills, leading up to the base of the hills, as available. This was after I had become a partner, and I made the first sketch proposed for what became Baldwin Hills Village in August of 1935, I believe. I still have a copy of that sketch somewhere. The idea was to have one very long cul-de-sac boulevard leading up to a shopping center and a school, with a lot of little cul-de-sacs feeding into it, which were a reproduction in very large scale of the place where I grew up in New Jersey, No. 1 Stanley Oval. Stanley Oval was a little cul-de-sac, and that was my ideal of a quiet residential environment. So this whole proposal was a multiplication of this concept of the cul-de-sac: quiet living environment and a means to walk to school without crossing streets. It had the distinct disadvantage of any long cul-de-sac into which these little ones feed. In any event, that took up most of the two hundred acres. And this essentially was just a subdivision of single-family residences.

LASKEY

Now, the reading that you had been doing prior to this, would this have included things like the Ebenezer Howard book, Garden Cities of Tomorrow?

ALEXANDER

Oh, sure, right.

LASKEY

This was a relatively new idea. The idea of planned communities arose about the turn of the century, when they first really began to see the need and to talk about it.

ALEXANDER

Yes, that's right.

LASKEY

How did you justify or how did you conceive of the need for a planned community in an area like West Los Angeles, which must have been very sparse at the time.

ALEXANDER

It was quite sparse. Well, our objective was not to develop a planned community as much as it was to make housing available to middle-income people. The way it turned out, the apartments in Baldwin Hills Village were rentable at $12.27 per room per month, which was quite a feat. And that was really the objective. We also would have liked to have included a school and a shopping center and even an industrial area. But this was beyond anything that we could get through the FHA at that time.

LASKEY

So the original plan at that time was for a community of single-family dwellings?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. And in working with the FHA and finding out that they had started a separate branch devoted to rental housing-- There were a few examples in the East, a couple of which had been designed by Clarence [S.] Stein of Wright and Stein Architects. One was Chatham Village in Pittsburgh. Also Sunnyside Gardens, I think it was, in Long Island. In any event, the FHA was enthusiastic about developing rental housing in order to get the cost of housing down and within reach of people who were still, of course, feeling the pinch of the Depression from 1935 and on. Things didn't turn around until about 1940. So, as a result of working with the FHA and finding out about their experience on these places in the East, we turned our attention to reducing the size of the development to one half of the originally contemplated size and reserving the rest for an expansion, if it proved successful. Then we narrowed it down to one hundred acres, let's see, about twenty acres of which in the final plan was reserved as what you might call a protective barrier or protective strip of land around the village over which we would continue to have control, but which was undesignated as far as use goes. The thought was that eventually Baldwin Hills Village would be duplicated or doubled in size by developing the portion to the south, up to the hills.

LASKEY

Up to the hills.

ALEXANDER

And so we started to work on this concept of rental housing. The town-house concept in the East was-- Well, did they call it town houses? Well, the housing in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington--attached housing--was long strips bordering a street with some space behind them but no space in between them. Continuous block after block, in New York, Brooklyn, and all over the East Coast, wherever there was housing of that type built. Los Angeles City had a building law that permitted attached housing up to a certain point. I think the maximum number of units before a break, in order to get fire equipment around I presume, was four units on the second floor, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, it was a building-department law in Los Angeles that helped form and shape the buildings in Baldwin Hills Village. Johnson made a trip to the East Coast and came back with glowing tales of various things he'd seen along the lines of what we were talking about. And also he had met with Clarence Stein and wanted to know if we would go along with having Stein as our consulting architect, which we agreed to do. Stein, as I recall, never visited us or Los Angeles during the entire development. But he did keep in touch by correspondence. Since the planning spanned a period of five years and it was seven years until it was completed, he served a very important function in keeping us on the track. That is, over a period of time, if a project is in an architect's office for five years, when things are not particularly active anyway, they are always tinkering with the darned thing [laughter] and they can't keep their hands off of it. So I think on occasion we would have some brilliant idea that would be untrue to the objectives that we had at first established.

LASKEY

Had you defined your objectives by then?

ALEXANDER

The major objective, I think, was to make the automobile accessible--which it had to be in Southern California--but to make it a servant instead of a master, and to somehow create a serene environment in which the automobile would not intrude, but yet make the automobile accessible. That was the major objective.

LASKEY

That was rather far-reaching for 1935, wasn't it?

ALEXANDER

Well, yes. Although this had been the objective of-- Let's see, Clarence Stein' s--

LASKEY

Radburn?

ALEXANDER

Radburn, yes. Radburn was largely single- family residences, but it did pay attention to separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. We had the good fortune of having the rapt attention during all of the planning period of Ray Knisley of the Baldwin estate. Although Ray was very conservative, he also could see that if large-scale housing was to be made available to-- How should I put it? We had to attempt economically to make housing available to the largest income group, which meant pretty low income. His economic objective was investment rather than speculation, which is the number one, perhaps the most important thing that separated Baldwin Hills Village from any other housing that went on after it.

LASKEY

Do you think this is the main reason why there were no more Baldwin Hills?

ALEXANDER

Yes, absolutely. It was developed in an era of investment and with investment in mind, and not with the hit-and-run objective of most speculators.

LASKEY

That also has to do with a rather crucial period of time in which the village was built.

ALEXANDER

Yes, that's true. It was built partly after we were--in fact entirely after we were--in the war. And we had to get permission from the War Production Board to proceed .

LASKEY

But it was designed before we were in the war--

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

--and built during the war. So you have a great dichotomy that's opened up here.

ALEXANDER

Right.

LASKEY

Before we get into that, I'm curious as to whether any members of the Baldwin family were involved in the plans.

ALEXANDER

Not directly, but after construction was almost completed I remember Lou Wilson going to Anita Baldwin, who was the surviving heir, the most important surviving heir at the time, to get her to donate $10,000 for putting in some specimen olive trees in one of the seventeen courts as a demonstration. And he was successful. As far as I know. that's the only direct Baldwin influence except for Ray Knisley, who was the manager of the estate.

LASKEY

And he was doing it as an investment, so this wasn't an act of charity on the part of the Baldwin family.

ALEXANDER

Oh, no.

LASKEY

Or a social cause they were involved with.

ALEXANDER

No, no.

LASKEY

Strictly an investment.

ALEXANDER

They agreed to put up the acreage necessary, which finally turned out to be, I think, sixty-four acres.

LASKEY

Now, was this the amount of acreage negotiable? You mentioned that you started out with two hundred. Had you wanted to develop the entire two hundred acres, would that have been available to you?

ALEXANDER

I think so if we could have. I think it was possible. You see, we started out with a single-family house plan and we ended up with something that would require two stories. But our objective was to develop something at ten families to the acre. This was an abstraction, but from experience the FHA liked it. And that's the way it turned out. We probably ended up with the same number of housing units as we had, spread over two hundred acres. But this was definitely a feasible plan. What made it possible to develop at all, under the FHA regulation, was the fact that the Baldwin estate put the land in as their investment, and they did not specify what the land had to be worth. So then all during the five-year period, well, I guess certainly dozens of financial setups were made in our office, and the variable was the price of the land. So that in order to make the thing work out economically, you'd work everything else out and then put the land in at whatever value would make the whole thing work.

LASKEY

[laughter] You got away with it?

ALEXANDER

Well, it wasn't a question of getting away with it; it was a question that they were willing to do that. It wasn't getting away with anything, but it would have been very difficult for us to have had a fixed price for the land and then make everything else work. As a matter of fact, we didn't get under construction until after the war broke out, at which point Marks Shardee were apprehensive about what was going to happen during the war and they backed out, and Herbert Baruch, the Herb Baruch Construction Company came in to build it.

LASKEY

What is it that Marks and Shardee were apprehensive about?

ALEXANDER

World war.

LASKEY

But I mean relating to Baldwin Hills Village. Would it be not being able to get materials, not being able to get workmen, or were they just apprehensive about the--?

ALEXANDER

I just don't know. Don't know.

LASKEY

You had come from Cornell with a beaux-arts background and you worked with Reginald Johnson, who was building large, single-family residences in Pasadena. Where did you acquire the knowledge to start working on multiple-family dwellings in houses or buildings that are essentially very modern?

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't know how to answer that question.

LASKEY

Now, the modern movement was surfacing in Los Angeles late in the thirties.

ALEXANDER

Sure. There's nothing very modern about the external appearance of Baldwin Hills Village--at least in my eyes. The external appearance is rather bland and not typed as to style. I think that's a great advantage, that it wasn't typed with the International style or some other style.

LASKEY

Well, it's modern in the sense that it wasn't a style at that point in the thirties, when they were still building--

ALEXANDER

You mean it wasn't Spanish.

LASKEY

--bungalows and Spanish and identifiable types. This was a flat roof, a very severe building which one thinks of as being modern.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, I guess so.

LASKEY

They certainly weren't building these buildings in Pasadena at the time. And you wouldn't have been doing this at Cornell. I think even Radburn, looking at some of the housing that Stein did in his planned communities, tended to have styles or to very much reflect the nature of the community in which they were built. But Baldwin Hills Village was different.

ALEXANDER

Well, we had an economic objective that helped pare it down. And I know I had developed a dislike of the rather phony, very often phony, Spanish things, which if you had a lot of money to spend you could develop into something which was quite acceptable, something that was almost Spanish. But if you go through Leimert Park or the area where you live and you see this developed in an inexpensive way, it isn't at all what even the poorest Mexican would do, as far as being true to itself.

1.6. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 2, 1986

LASKEY

You developed a rather unique style for Baldwin Hills Village, not using references to classical styles.

ALEXANDER

For one thing, before the design was jelled, you might say, I had gone back East in the summer of '37 or '38, ostensibly for a two-week vacation. I stayed there for a full year, gaining experience not only in the design and layout of apartments, but looking around the East at the time and maturing my idea of breaking away from what I called copycat architecture. That undoubtedly had a major influence on the way the design turned out.

LASKEY

I'm curious-- This is an aside. But why did the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company decide to go into large-scale housing?

ALEXANDER

They had a lot of money and they wanted to get some return on it. If they got 2 percent on their money, they were in clover compared to-- I mean, they had to earn money for their policyholders, and they were given permission to invest a certain amount, a certain proportion of the total policyholders' money they had in housing. Insurance companies are regulated. I don't know the details of it, but they are regulated by states and by the federal government, for that matter. They couldn't put all of their investment in housing or pretty soon they'd own the whole damn country. But that's the way they got into it, and that's the way they later got into-- What's it called on Wilshire Boulevard?

LASKEY

Park Labrea.

ALEXANDER

Park Labrea is Metropolitan.

LASKEY

That's what I was going to ask you. At the time you were working on Parkchester, was there any thought about Park Labrea at that time? I think Park Labrea was just slightly after that.

ALEXANDER

Correct. Yes. Yeah, I remember when we went to see-- Well, let's get back where we were on the design. I had noticed that projects that were a 100 percent two stories high or higher were not-- Well, I just didn't feel they had a residential quality that was appropriate. So one of my objectives when I came back was to change the design where we had everything two stories high, uniformly, to introducing 10 percent of the building area in one-story design. So where we had some three- bedroom apartments-- A three-bedroom apartment normally doesn't work out to be equal in size between the first floor and the second floor; that is, you can get two bedrooms and a bath to balance a first-floor living room, dining area and kitchen. Well, in any event, we had these large apartments at the center of a long building overlapping each other. So I took those apartments and put them on the end of the building, a portion of which was one story high. So that when you're walking along on a path and you round the end of that building, you can really almost reach up to the eaves with your hand. They're that low. And then I used a one-bedroom-- Let's see, was it one bedroom? Yeah, one-bedroom apartments I made one story high. I forget what the proportion was in the total scheme of things, but I used that one-bedroom apartment also at the end of another row of two-story blocks. And I also used those one-bedroom apartments to form some buildings of three one-bedroom apartments. These one-story features were introduced in the plan as a whole at places where the path turns around a whole group of buildings. So that walking through the village, you had in several cases these low, typically Californian, as I saw it, buildings that I think changed its character from what it had been when I left Los Angeles to go back East.

LASKEY

Now, these one-story parts of the building were in a different material too.

ALEXANDER

Yes. Well, the one-bedroom apartments, whether they were one story [at the] end of a building or three one-bedrooms making a building that's all one story, were made or were fashioned of large bricks, whitewashed. And those bricks were adobe-brick size. They had been developed by Fritz Ruppel. Fritz Ruppel had developed these bricks-- hard, burned clay--for the restoration of the San [Juan] Capistrano Mission. Was it San Capistrano? No, it was San Luis Rey, I think. In any event, he was restoring a mission (he was a contractor) and he wanted to get the adobe effect with the permanence of burned-clay brick. So he developed this size, and they were available at the time. They were used for these one-story, one- bedroom apartments. And we depended on a variety of textures and a variety of color and a variety of roofing gravel to overcome the monotony of everything being exactly the same. Whether that was desirable or not, that was the effect anyway.

LASKEY

Now, how did you go about siting the buildings in the village itself?

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't know exactly how that happened, but I know that Lou Wilson— We had developed a plan that looked just like a bunch of cigars taken out of a box. It had no central focus; it was just a rigid assembly of these building blocks. On one occasion, I think over a weekend, Lou Wilson arrived Monday morning with a suggestion for a layout that did have focus. I don't know whether he personally devised this thing or what happened, but it was a refreshing change. The main thing that it had was at the center of the plan facing Rodeo Drive there was a proposed office or rental building, an office building and a semicircular arrangement of short blocks of apartments. And behind that, at the center of the plan, was a nursery school. The buildings were arranged in a Greek fret pattern, that is, two long buildings perpendicular to the adjoining road and a building at the end of those, perpendicular to them and parallel to the road, making a U- shape into which you could drive and park your car in parking sheds. And then that U-shape connected to another U-shape with a building parallel to the road, forming a U facing the interior of the scheme, which would become a park. So that they're developed in this fret pattern, a series of openings facing the road where you would drive in and park your car in carports, alternating with a series of U-forms facing the interior park. And in the development of this scheme there were to be three major parks with smaller residential-type parks flowing into them. I don't know whether that describes it--trying to describe these things in words is really weird.

LASKEY

I know, but possibly we'll be able to include some plans or photographs.

ALEXANDER

However, even then, I would say the plan lacked any real grace, but at least it had some organization instead of being bland, monotonous. This is so often true of developments, where everything is the same and everything, for instance, is two stories high and without any form. And this introduced some form in the scheme, but went through a lot of work after that. One factor occurred during the working-drawing stage that was probably the most beneficial thing to the grace of the interior plan. For many years, the Cornell [University] School of Architecture, which included landscape architecture, had been preeminent in the field of landscape architecture. So that almost every year a Cornell-graduating landscape architect would win the Prix de Rome, which was the most prestigious award in landscape architecture. And the year-- Let's see, it must have been 1938. The person who won the Prix de Rome from Cornell was sent to Mexico instead of Italy, because Mussolini was making it very difficult to live in Italy. I think he wrote me from Mexico that he was coming through Los Angeles on his way back East, and I met him at the station. The reason was that he was going to visit his uncle, who was the designer of the hotel that you just mentioned, the Huntington Hotel. Myron Hunt's nephew was the guy, and what in the hell was his name?

LASKEY

Fred Edmondson.

ALEXANDER

That's right. So did I go through all this before?

LASKEY

No.

ALEXANDER

Okay, so I met Fred Edmondson at the station and the very next morning I had him working at the office. He worked with me ten days and ten evenings on specific paths and shrubbery and tree massing that changed the whole aspect of the thing and made it graceful and livable. A lot of the things, or some of the things that were proposed and were at first built, have been eliminated since, but in any event, that was really a great contribution that he made. Okay, where do we go from here?

LASKEY

How about the FHA?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. From a standpoint of design--since their only experience with multiple housing had been on the East Coast, where cities had been built before the automobile came along--they just could not believe there was any necessity whatsoever for a plan, which we insisted on, of having one car stall for every apartment, plus an additional parking space equivalent to the number of apartments. They just couldn't believe it. Every one of their projects that they had insured in the East was easily accessible by pedestrians to their employment by public transportation of some kind, and an automobile was unheard of almost. So we had quite a battle to defend our one carport for every apartment plus one parking space for every apartment. Another thing, when Baldwin Hills was almost wiped out by a flood when the dam to a reservoir burst above it, it wiped out a few of the apartments but didn't destroy the village as a whole. But I was quite apprehensive that the owner, who by then was Baldwin M. Baldwin, would change everything for the worse. Instead of which, he was able to do some things we were not able to do under the FHA and under available technology at that time. For instance, we had a patio for every apartment that had a ground floor, and the aluminum sliding glass door had not been developed at that time. After the flood a lot of these went in where they should have been in the first place.

LASKEY

Oh, to lead from the dining area out into the patio.

ALEXANDER

Well, to lead from anything at all--I mean from the bedroom even. The major battle with the FHA was just as they couldn't imagine a car for every apartment, they couldn't imagine our next proposal, which was that the main entrance for every apartment be on the garage side of the building. That was definitely not the prestige side. It was obviously going to be the garden side. The garden side was the place where we would have expected to have the patios, and have the prestige or the main entrance on the side facing the garages, or the back of the garages. We proved that that area, although narrow, could be attractive by showing them a little narrow alley that exists between the main public library [Los Angeles City Central Library] and the California Club in downtown Los Angeles. It's a very narrow space, but it's very beautifully landscaped. We would take them down there and show them that a small space with a wall on one side and entrances to apartments on the other could be quite pleasant, and that was the way to do it because that was the shortest distance between your automobile and your residence. But we lost out on that--we had to have a prestige entrance facing the park. So that at a certain point I can show you cobwebs growing on the doors to the park, and the place where the kiddies meet their daddy was in the kitchen.

LASKEY

So if you had had your way, the Baldwin Hills buildings, then, would just be turned around from the way they are.

ALEXANDER

Yes . It would take some modification, but that was the essential idea, yeah. The impressive nature of these great green areas, the three large parks in the center and the subsidiary parks leading into them, created a park system that I suppose any manager in his right mind would attempt to preserve as a pristine park. It had been intended, from a social standpoint, that the kids would play ball with their dad in the center green and this would be a real living place. The kids could pitch tents out there and play cowboys and Indians and whatnot. But this was not to be. At one point the chief gardener, chief groundsman, brought in a truckload of trees, and I saw him in one of these greens spotting these in such a way that it would be impossible to play ball out there anymore. The gardeners were instructed that if they saw any kids playing out there they were to turn the sprinklers on.

LASKEY

Now, this was the owners or the managers?

ALEXANDER

This was after New England Mutual Life Insurance Company bought the thing.

LASKEY

Who were the original owners?

ALEXANDER

The original owners were some twenty individuals: this included the architects, the Baldwin estate, and the Chandlers, and I don't know who, a whole bunch of people. There were quite a few investors. I think there were twenty or thirty--I'm not sure which.

LASKEY

Well, who was the leading light behind it? There must have been somebody who was holding all of this together.

ALEXANDER

Ray Knisley and Reg Johnson.

LASKEY

Really? That's amazing.

ALEXANDER

It was sold after the war to New England Mutual, and then they in turn later sold it to Baldwin M. Baldwin. Each time for a profit, of course.

LASKEY

So in the beginning, then, it was just the idea of a group of people who wanted to see a plan like this.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was the idea of Ray Knisley and the architects, influenced of course by costs and so forth that the contractor would advise on. And as far as I know, no ultimate investor except those I mentioned had any part in the decisions or the social objectives or whatever.

LASKEY

So then the large part of the funding was through the FHA, which is why they had so much authority.

ALEXANDER

I believe it was an 80-percent loan. So the 20 percent had to be in cash and services and land. The hard dollar investment was not tremendous, but compared to what happened after the war with speculation when they got away with murder and didn't have a nickel in it, this was quite different. The FHA limited-dividend corporation was based on experience in housing in England for some hundred years, in which it was shown that investment in housing could be successful over a long period of time. The investment was limited to 6 percent per year and the balance put in a separate fund for amortization, so that at the end of its life you could tear it down and you'd have the money to rebuild. Reserves were required to be put up for replacement of water heaters every seven years, of Venetian blinds every five years, of this, that, and the other according to what experience showed the life of the gadget might be. Unlike other investments in housing-- Where the owner or owners milk it for all it's worth, without any thought of the future, and then when it comes time to replace a water heater, "Oh my god, where's the money going to come from? We're going to have to take it out of the current rent." And there's hardly any of that reservation of what some people used to call a sinking fund to replace or repair or repaint. These days, for the most part, that's all of a sudden a shock that you have to spend this money. So that was a very good discipline, which, however, was avoided or eliminated as soon as New England Mutual bought it. Let's see, Lincoln of Omaha, is it? Lincoln [National Life] Insurance Company. Well, I think they were the first lenders. But the FHA doesn't put money into anything. Did you know that?

LASKEY

Well, they make available loans to you.

ALEXANDER

What they do is they insure loans.

LASKEY

They insure the loans.

ALEXANDER

And then Fanny Mae [Federal National Mortgage Associate (FNMA)] is the one that takes over the loans.

LASKEY

Well, then it is not unlike the banking system, the FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation], in that they simply insure the loan for the lender.

ALEXANDER

That's right, yeah. Okay, where are we now?

LASKEY

After Baldwin Hills Village was built, you moved into it. But where were you living? What was your life like at the time that this was being built? You were not living in Pasadena anymore.

ALEXANDER

Well, I was in Pasadena still.

LASKEY

Oh, you were?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, up until the time-- Let's see, yes. When it was under construction I lived on North San Gabriel Boulevard, which is in Pasadena, in a three-bedroom house, one story high, designed by Curtis Chambers. It had been built by Earl Huggins in Pasadena, a contractor who had wanted to do good things. He had bought the land that had belonged to a rather large estate where the building had burned down, and he built-- [tape recorder off] Huggins had surrounded the site of the old house that had burned down with a whole series of one-story houses and had intended to convert the interior into a park, which would be owned jointly in common by the people surrounding it. He ran into an obstacle by the FHA as to maintaining it, so that never happened. But it made a nice informal playground for our kids. Speaking of kids, in Baldwin Hills Village we had the ideal that this would be a family place with lots of kids. So we had evenly divided, more or less, eight or more little "tot lots." And after the thing opened, or I guess just before it opened, it was decided to change the nursery at the center of the thing. The nursery school was to become a recreation center. It was decided as a matter of policy that certain areas would be for families with children and certain other areas would be for families without children. This imbalance-- For instance, in the years when there were no gas or electric clothes dryers, you had diaper--

LASKEY

No disposable diapers either.

ALEXANDER

Right. So you had this imbalance of the laundry yards. Where there were kids or little children you needed a lot, and you didn't need as many in other areas. Over a period of years the attrition set in, caused by the fact that any manager in his right mind with a waiting list twice the occupancy of the village would pick people who were sterile and went to Europe every year, that sort of thing. [laughter]

LASKEY

To make his own life easier.

ALEXANDER

So that eventually children, families with children, hardly existed at all in the village. And then tot lots were turned into additional parking or whatever. Then with the advent of the dryer and the washing machine, the large laundry-hanging areas were also converted into additional parking. I don't know what other changes, but in any event it has become a place without children. Another disappointment at the very beginning was that, without telling us, the FHA eliminated 212 benches that we had planned through the village.

LASKEY

On the greens and in the park areas?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right. So that makes walking in the park-- Well, benches are conducive to park walking as far as I'm concerned. They were cut out, I think, just because they needed to show a balance sheet, and this was a little bit of money that nobody would notice. But it never has recovered from that. The park areas are serene and beautiful, but they look as though they are not lived in.

LASKEY

And obviously none of the future owners ever saw the need to put in benches.

ALEXANDER

Right. Well, it was always, at the beginning, something we would get around to doing when we had the money. The first years during the war, two factors made it very difficult for it to survive economically. One was that unless you could prove the war-related need for a telephone, you were not permitted a telephone. That meant that we had to have a telephone exchange manned twenty- four hours a day at the office of the village.

LASKEY

At your expense? Or at the expense of the village?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. The rents were frozen, and then we were required to put in this telephone service. We had originally had a commitment from the bus lines, the rapid transit, whatever it's called, the RTD [Southern California Rapid Transit District] , to run a bus out to Baldwin Hills Village to get regular bus service. When we entered the war, the War Production Board refused to permit them to come out, so the Baldwin Hills Village Company had to pay for a shuttle bus from the village to the nearest shopping center, in the form of a big station wagon. Would you call it a station wagon? It was a little old bus.

LASKEY

A little van.

ALEXANDER

A little van, right. And those two unexpected, unplanned- for expenses made it touch and go as to whether it would survive during the war. Of course, at the end of the war it was a very attractive buy.

LASKEY

Well, the fact that it was filled up to 100 percent at all times, as I think you've written, helped make it through this tough period.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, that's true.

LASKEY

When did you move into the village?

ALEXANDER

Nineteen forty-two.

LASKEY

As soon as it was completed.

ALEXANDER

Shortly after it-- Well, I guess the occupancy started in stages. We were not by any means the first family to move in. It was all full when we moved in.

LASKEY

Now, you went from Baldwin Hills Village to your next project, which was Lakewood City, the next planned community.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

Were you doing those concurrently, or was Baldwin Hills Village, at least your part in it, pretty much finished at that point?

ALEXANDER

I'm trying to think.

LASKEY

I think they probably overlapped, at least a bit.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Baldwin Hills Village plans were finished and it was under construction before I was asked by [David J.] Witmer to lay out Lakewood City, as it was called.

1.7. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 2, 1986

ALEXANDER

Returning to Baldwin Hills Village. I lived in it for nine years, including some of the war years. My two children [Lynne M. Alexander and Timothy M. Alexander] went to Baldwin Hills Elementary School, and then my daughter went to Dorsey High School. It was ironic that the horrors of war and their side effects had the benefit of creating a lively community in Baldwin Hills Village. We used the adult clubhouse, which was programmed seven days a week, several hours every day, with a Friday night forum to which we invited speakers to debate various issues. We had a square dance night every Wednesday night, as I recall it, card games and so forth. We had celebrations and plays and an annual Baldwin Hills Olympics, with egg-throwing contests and jogging contests and so forth. Because of our restricted ability to get around on account of the conservation of gasoline and so forth, we developed a Lanham Act nursery school in the first floor of one of the buildings next to the clubhouse.

LASKEY

What was the Lanham Act?

ALEXANDER

I don't know. There was a congressman named [Henry J.] Lanham, as I recall, who set up assistance for nursery schools during the war, when so many mothers were engaged in war production. Since we were not permitted by the War Production Board to build the commercial area that was planned at one end of the village, we remodeled the ground floor of the other building adjacent to the clubhouse as a market. The fact that travel was restricted gave us a real sense of community in the village. Although you might not know your next-door neighbor, there were people in the village that you knew very well and got to know better. Following the war, from a social standpoint, I think it declined for a long time. The erosion--and I think I mentioned it already--of the manager having a long waiting list and being able to pick and choose the people who would cause him the least trouble resulted in eliminating children. Then when it became a condominium, much to my horror, the new owners who changed it to a condominium put deed restrictions in the new deeds that no one under the age of eighteen was to live in the village, and if you became pregnant, you'd have to move out.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Yes. I went to the state legislature to see if I could overcome this by state legislation. But whereas they could, and did, enact a statewide law against discrimination [against] children in rental units, they couldn't do anything about a private dwelling or a private condominium. In any event, I did experience the village intimately during its first years and enjoyed it thoroughly.

LASKEY

Living in it, are there any major changes you would have made?

ALEXANDER

Well, I mentioned the 212 benches that were missing. I would put the benches in.

LASKEY

How about a swimming pool?

ALEXANDER

Well, that was planned. But as a decorative part of the landscape plan, immediately in front of the community building there was a fountain, a spray pool sort of. This was one step toward having a swimming pool. We had planned having a swimming pool, but we put in this spray pool for small children. It would accumulate, when it was in operation, water perhaps four or five inches deep. One day when the kids were splashing around in it, one of the mothers noticed that a child was lying in the center of the pool, nose under water. It was only about four inches of water, and yet the child would have died if she hadn't gone in and taken the child out and pumped the water out. So that put the kibosh on even the wading pool (it was called a wading pool), so we converted it into a mound of earth with plants growing out of it. I mean, talk about liability insurance!

LASKEY

[laughter] Yeah.

ALEXANDER

We just gave up on having a pool. It was to have been between the clubhouse and the office; that was where the pool was planned. We did originally have an idea of developing a more or less self-contained community. We had visualized the commercial area where it is now, but we had hoped to get the elementary school and a church and so forth, other functions, within the community. We found that the school board--I should say the person in charge of school planning--was entirely opposed to the idea, since it seemed to him to be a sort of exclusive-- We didn't have in mind having only Baldwin Hills children in the school, but we wanted to have a school within the community somehow, and we were especially concerned about the safety of the kids crossing Rodeo Road.

LASKEY

With good reason.

ALEXANDER

Nevertheless, they put it on the opposite side of-- They bought the land from the Baldwin estate across the street from Hauser [Boulevard] and Rodeo Road. They bought a piece of land that was just big enough for the school buildings plus a playground completely covered with asphalt. And so I did persuade-- It took a lot of persuasion to get a resolution passed by the [Los Angeles Unified School District] Board of Education and the park department [Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks] that if I could get a park given to the city, ground given to the city for a park adjacent to the school, that there would be joint use between the school and use as a park. That is, they would then have some green areas as well as the asphalt area. And this was agreed upon, and Ray Knisley was intrumental in the Baldwin estate giving the land for the park adjacent to the school. After New England Mutual Life Insurance Company purchased Baldwin Hills Village, I became a sort of troublemaker from their standpoint. On one occasion when I had-- Let's see. I had gone to Guam, and from Guam we decided to go on to Manila and Tokyo before going home, in order to explore the availability of materials for construction on Guam. I looked at my medical record regarding my passport and found that I needed a booster shot for cholera. It turned out when I got home that I'd evidently been shot with a dirty needle, and I got hepatitis, which socked me in the hospital. But at the same time I got an eviction notice from the manager of Baldwin Hills Village, because in my absence my daughter had taken pity on a little kitten and had taken the kitten in the house and was keeping it. That was against the rules. We were not to have any animals.

LASKEY

Oh, couldn't they just--?

ALEXANDER

So the grounds keeper, under orders, found the kitten in an odd moment outside the house and destroyed the kitten.

LASKEY

Oh, no.

ALEXANDER

And also issued me an eviction notice.

LASKEY

Do you think it was because you had the kitten or because you--?

ALEXANDER

Oh, no, that was the excuse for getting us out. So that was when I got permission-- Well, I bought the remaining interest in the building that had been built as a-- What do you call it? There was a building that had been built for the architect, a construction building that I had used as an architect's office, and I got permission to move that fifteen miles across town at three o'clock in the morning and make a house out of it. Anyway, that was the end of my Baldwin Hills experience.

LASKEY

Did you contest it at all?

ALEXANDER

No, there wasn't any sense that I could see.

LASKEY

Weren't you outraged?

ALEXANDER

Yes, I was outraged, and I considered the New England Mutual absentee landlords to be about the worst, but there isn't much you can do with a giant like that.

LASKEY

But while Wilson, Merrill, and Alexander were working on Baldwin Hills Village, you did have some other projects that you were involved with. Some that weren't built, like the Dana Point project.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, what can I say about them? Well, there were several residences that were the things that brought me to Wilson and Merrill, later Wilson, Merrill, and Alexander. I think there were a dozen single-family residences. One of them was for Marjorie Rambeau, a silent-movie star. That was above Sunset Plaza [Drive], you know, where- -

LASKEY

Doheny [Road] up above Sunset [Boulevard]?

ALEXANDER

Sunset Plaza Drive winds up above Sunset Boulevard above where the Trocadero [Cafe] used to be.

LASKEY

Yeah, I know where that is.

ALEXANDER

Anyway, we designed two houses up there. I went back to see them one time, I guess three or four years ago; they're still there, still about the same. We designed a house for Calvin Kuhl, who had been sent out by some New York advertising agency to be in charge of their new radio program in Toluca Lake. There again, I went around to see if it was still there, and it's still there. It was a sort of Cape Cod colonial, a one-story house with eaves that you could touch with your hand. Two little people, and a house to suit them right on the lake. One of the other projects was-- You mentioned the Sherwood Inn. Bing Crosby was one of the ringleaders in establishing the Del Mar racetrack, which was the catalyst that would presumably bring back the life of this great big hotel at Del Mar which had been built in the big hotel days.

LASKEY

Was it one of the hotels like the Del Coronado?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

That period, the turn of the century.

ALEXANDER

Nowhere as good as the Hotel [Del] Coronado, but, yeah, about the same time. Barney Vanderstien was an entrepreneur whose business in the old silent-movie days was the care and feeding of a movie crew on location, out in the desert or wherever. And when the Boulder Dam was proposed and the six companies got together to build the dam, they needed somebody to take care of the care and feeding of the thousands of people who built the dam. And Barney Vanderstien took the contract for the housing and feeding of these people. Well, at the end of the war, he was looking around for things to do and bought the hotel, the Sherwood. One project that delighted me and I had a lot of fun with was the bar for the remodeled hotel. I subscribed to the theory at the time that a bar could not be successful unless the ceiling was low and the lights were dim. The Sherwood Inn sounded pretty English to me, so I decided that an appropriate theme would be the Knight's Inn or the Knight's Bar--what was it? Well, in any event, this hotel had very, very high ground-floor ceilings, inappropriate for the bar, I thought. In order to lower the ceiling without too much cost, I devised a fabric ceiling of wide red and blue alternating stripes draped over rope molds covered with gold leaf. And to carry out the theme I had in mind, I used Burke's Peerage to get the coats of arms of people with whom racetrack fans might identify--people such as Captain Cook and Shakespeare and Morris (who invented the Morris Chair) [laughter] and various people who had something to do with California or would be recognized by relatively unsophisticated Californians.

LASKEY

And racetrack fans.

ALEXANDER

And I got a wood-carver by the name of Peckaneck--I couldn't spell it precisely, but Peckaneck was the name--who was carving in depth, somewhat in the style of Grinling Gibbons, a famous British wood-carver.

LASKEY

Where did you find Peckaneck?

ALEXANDER

In Pasadena. I forget what I had him do before that, but he was looking for work. I made full-size drawings of each one of these coats of arms, which he developed in three dimensions, beautifully carved, heavy, thick wooden models of the coat of arms, which were then silver-leafed and gold-leafed and colored correctly according to Burke's Peerage. And it made quite a show, one of these coats of arms for each booth. Each booth was set up as if it were a horse stall with a carved horse's head. And at the center, where there was a musician's stage for a trio, he carved a Saint George slaying the dragon scene, pretty large scale. I forget how big it was, but quite substantial. And then I got a friend who had made a hobby of Burke's Peerage and coats of arms to write up a description and the background of each one of these characters, which was on parchment adjacent to the arms. That was a lot of fun.

LASKEY

What happened to the hotel? Was it successful?

ALEXANDER

Well, it was, but I wasn't able to follow it until I was engaged by the regents of UCSD [University of California, San Diego] and I found that there were some people who remembered the bar and they remembered when it was changed. I think the hotel was torn down, but I'm not sure about that. But in any event, the bar was dismantled at one point and the fragments of these carvings had been dispersed somehow. I located Saint George and the dragon in some other bar in the area. I wasn't able to track down the whole thing. I was just interested.

LASKEY

It's kind of nice that it got recycled and not just destroyed.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

Then you got Involved with the Bakersfield Opera House.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Well, that was an "opery" house that still had some of the stage props behind the scenes when we went in, and it had been bought by [Twentieth Century] Fox West Coast to convert to a movie theater. I was very excited about the project and figured on doing something new and different for an entrance to a movie. We were of course to have a marquee--that was a necessity. As long as you could call attention to yourself by building over the sidewalk, then that is the thing to do. I had the concept of having a movie screen up above the marquee and at the outside of the marquee having a projector to project movies of coming movies or whatever. Of course, it would only be shown at night, as it would be invisible during the daytime. So I didn't worry about that too much, because I was so excited about the thing. I also had got excited about the use of neon, which was of course the big rage in the twenties. But rather than having the kinds of pylon or tower that was prevalent at the time, I had a neon character, a salesman, help me design a spiral neon as the tower with an exposed tube. And I made a model to illustrate this concept having a movie screen above the marquee.

LASKEY

Now, the marquee is jutting out over the sidewalk, the general thirties marquee.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, from the outside of this triangular marquee there would be a projector; the theory was to project onto the screen.

LASKEY

Where's the screen going to be?

ALEXANDER

On the face of the building.

LASKEY

On the face of the building, so the projector is at the point of the marquee projecting the film onto the building.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. I don't think I could make it work now, but that was the idea, and I was so excited about it I made a model .

LASKEY

Where was the neon tower?

ALEXANDER

At just one corner of the building.

LASKEY

But this is up above the actual building and things.

ALEXANDER

And I made a model with real neon that would light up and so forth and took it to Mr. [Spyros P.] Skouras ' s office, and it went over like a lead balloon. He took one look and said, "No, it's not fancy enough." So we went back, and I found out that the only way to go with Skouras was to engage the services of Tony [Anthony B.] Heinsbergen. Tony Heinsbergen had his place out on-- What was it?

LASKEY

On Beverly.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, on Beverly Boulevard. And the only thing that was not a Heinsbergen, when I got into the decoration of this building, was the doors. I found somebody who had developed a technique of sandblasting in three dimensions. That is, he used something like tape or gummy substance-- what was it?--a rubbery substance with which you coat the glass. And then the portion that you want to be the deepest, you cut out of the rubbery substance, peel it off, then sandblast, and then you peel off some more around that and sandblast it again. In other words, instead of building up, you build down. The portion that gets four sandblasts is the deepest portion, and the one that gets only one is the shallowest, so that you can build this thing in three dimensions. I made a floral design on the glass which was developed that way. That was my contribution to the ornament.

LASKEY

Now, at the same time--we had discussed this last time--you were also getting involved in public housing. You were working on the Estrada Courts and Lakewood [City].

ALEXANDER

Estrada Courts came after I had been in New York. I came back from working on Parkchester and found that Lou [Louis E.] Wilson was in two or three joint ventures with other architects and that I wasn't included. So I said, "Well, I'll go out and stake out my own claim." Did I discuss this in our previous session?

LASKEY

Yes .

ALEXANDER

Yeah, okay.

LASKEY

But I wanted to ask you about Baldwin Hills Village, and I think I did ask you: In relation to Estrada Courts, and also then going on into Lakewood Village, would we have had any of those developments if there hadn't been a depression?

ALEXANDER

Perhaps not, I don't know. Well, we have always needed housing for moderate- income people and poor people and so forth. And the FHA [Federal Housing Administration] was the product of a national conference called by [Herbert] Hoover. Hoover called for a conference on the problem of housing. That conference produced about a two-foot-long shelf of books that I found in the public library at Pasadena some time later in the early thirties. And the major product that came out of this Hoover conference on housing was FHA. Now, I don't think that was the product of the Depression, but just the product of the need for public interest in the housing industry, to see that it was serving all the people. Before the FHA, it was customary to have very short mortgages and to have a balloon payment required if you were going to keep your property. In other words, you wouldn't pay very much per month when you started, but the theory was that you were going to get rich and then pay it all off in one block-just in five or ten years or whatever. That was quite unsatisfactory, and it didn't serve the public or the investors or anybody. So I think the FHA would have happened in some form anyway, and part of that FHA effort was rental housing. So I don't think that was a product of the Depression. I don't know about whether public housing would have-- I think public housing would have likewise come along somehow anyway.

LASKEY

Well, the trends, the history of it go back before the Depression, but there had not exactly been an aura in this country of acceptance or seeming to understand the need for it.

ALEXANDER

Right, that's true.

LASKEY

Now, the large developments that were built after the war, like Levittown--which I think was a postwar development- -were definitely not caused by the Depression. They were not caused by a communal need so much as they were caused by the pressures of population. So possibly you're right in saying that these developments would have happened because there was a need for them.

ALEXANDER

And Levittown was the result of five years of forced idleness in housing. So there was a pent-up demand, a lot of new family formation, and a hiatus in the whole housing industry during the war.

LASKEY

Lakewood City sort of falls in between these developments that we're talking about. It was single- family dwellings.

ALEXANDER

It was single-family dwellings and it was built before the war. Part of it was built during the war. A lot of the carpenter labor in that project consisted of people from Oklahoma and Arkansas moving to the West. And I remember when we had the submarine scare here, the bombing near Santa Barbara, all of a sudden there were no carpenters on the job. It was the first attempt that I know of to build housing with a factory in the fields. That is to say, there were two young men who had been engaged by contractors who built Wyvernwood [Los Angeles] -- which was developed and owned by John Griff ith--who became the contractors of Lakewood City. They set up a big shed and sawmill in which, after having seven different floor plans and after building a mock-up of each one, they would take it apart and see how long each member was and cut to fit every stick of lumber that went into the house, bundled according to which window, which door, and so forth must be built in the house. Everything was labeled, bundled and trekked from this sawmill to the site. It took three Ross- carrier loads per building. The first one would take it up to the floor, the rough-floor stage. The second load would take it up, including the roof, and the third load would be all of the finished lumber. They had this organized like that with holes for wiring or plumbing or whatnot, pre- drilled.

LASKEY

It was a kind of prefabricated house?

ALEXANDER

It was probably the most successful prefab attempt. It was really prefab using traditional methods of nail pounding and so forth. But this managed to get to a stage where there were eight completions a day; there was a house an hour being turned out.

LASKEY

How many houses in total?

ALEXANDER

Well, 2,400, I think. There were approximately 500 hundred at a time in a surge. I was the only one able to do the field supervision or inspection, or whatever you want to call it--observation for the architect. [David J.] Witmer had been called to Washington to be chief architect of the Pentagon. His partner, [Loyal F.] Watson, was very hard of hearing; also, he was quite a bit older. So I was elected to go out and furnish the observation. Well, when we got to the stage of there being a house an hour completion--and each house had to have five inspections--I would go out with this FHA character, McDonald I think his name was, who knew construction down to the last nail, the way I did not. I walked around with him until I walked my legs up to my knees; it was really pitiful. Five inspections per house and eight houses a day. That's forty houses to review, in one stage or another. That was a job and a half. This guy Mcdonald could see that something was wrong from a half a block away about a house that we were walking over to see. I learned a hell of a lot about putting things together.

LASKEY

Did that help you when you were involved in further planning of communities?

ALEXANDER

It didn't help me very much in community planning, but it helped me understand construction where sticks of wood were involved.

LASKEY

You've written, "Although I would come to look with horror on such an object"--I'm talking about Lakewood City--"I approached the task with enthusiasm." Why did you come to look at it with horror?

ALEXANDER

Oh, well, making everything individual and different from every other person's-- To make every house different is not my objective anymore. I think it's a mistake. We were trying to mimic a community that grew gradually, and we did [it] overnight, falsely, by twisting, turning, reversing, and upside-downing, attached or detached garage, simply for the sake of making something different. There's a little book by, I think his name was Rasmussen, that points out the difference between the British and the American. The British wanting to live in a house that is just like the one next door, so that you don't notice him. You go to Bath, for instance, and you see a row of houses, every one exactly alike, and they just love it that way. The American wants to stick his neck out and call attention to himself: "I'm an individual!" And this forced difference I detest now, which I did not at the time. Everybody's attempt to be different at any cost.

LASKEY

Well, if you were designing a subdivision now-- these are single-family residences--would you have them all look the same? I mean, I think that's a little bit different when you are doing a community or a subdivision like that than when you're doing something like Baldwin Hills Village, which is a different kind of a community. You could have probably more shared features. How would you--? How do you visualize now--?

ALEXANDER

I guess I just wouldn't get into the game.

LASKEY

Just wouldn't do it. [laughter] Well, I guess they still are building subdivisions with single-family residences. It is just sort of running through my mind whether they are even doing that anymore, even out in the valleys.

ALEXANDER

I don't know. I'm unfamiliar with the field now.

1.8. TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 2, 1986

LASKEY

Regarding the importance of craftsmen, particularly the importance of craftsmen in the prewar building, what happened to those craftsmen when the war came?

ALEXANDER

Well, they got jobs in the aircraft industry making models, full-size fuselage or whatever. I wasn't able to track them, but I know that they got out of the business they'd been trained in and into allied fields in the war industries, in shipbuilding. I'm sure that they had modelers in shipbuilding. There's one blacksmith in San Francisco that still has his blacksmith's shop--he's not shoeing horses anymore. But he's pretty rare. I noticed on Olvera Street there was a wrought-iron craftsman who was doing work right up to ten years ago at least.

LASKEY

He just died last year.

ALEXANDER

Is that so?

LASKEY

They just closed up his little place.

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't know where they went, but I know they had jobs in war industries.

LASKEY

Well, after the war, with the changes in technology used in architecture and in design, there doesn't seem to have been a place for them. Because I think you mentioned at some point in your writings about how important these men were. Again going back to the early architects of Pasadena, that they could probably not have built or designed a building without the use of these craftsmen. And after the war, that is probably not true.

ALEXANDER

Well, even in just simple painting-- Caradoc Rees, who was the father of our state senator--

LASKEY

Tom [Thomas M.] Rees?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, Tom Rees. Wasn't he a congressmen also? Well, his father, Caradoc Rees, was a real craftsman in the field of painting. He would insist on doing a perfectly beautiful job that turned a piece of wood into ivory. NO one would consider painting with a thin coat of paint, letting it dry, and then rubbing it with— what do you call it?--volcanic ash.

LASKEY

Pumice stone.

ALEXANDER

Pumice, yeah, pumice and water. And then doing another coat and pumice and water and doing a sixteen-coat job--in a kitchen. But that's the only kind of work he knew how to do, and he was very much in demand by people who had the money and who loved beautiful things. And in a way, it shows how our standard of living has declined, or at least we place emphasis on things other than craftsmanship. Nobody would consider doing what he did at all today, and he found that out. I saw him many times after. His business had just practically disappeared because of the lack of appreciation and the willingness to pay for a superb job. He reverted to painting landscapes for pleasure.

LASKEY

And probably the technique was not passed on to apprentices.

ALEXANDER

That's right. There was no demand for it anymore .

LASKEY

Well, at the point of Lakewood City and the building of Baldwin Hills Village, and even the construction of Estrada Courts, we were in the war. Given restrictions on building--in fact, I think there was a moratorium on building--what did you do?

ALEXANDER

What did I do? I went to work for Lockheed [Aircraft] . In manufacturing, not in plant engineering.

LASKEY

How did you do that?

ALEXANDER

How did I do it?

LASKEY

What was your background?

ALEXANDER

Well, my background was architectural school, in which one is trained to synthesize, put things together. I had a theory at one time that architectural training was a pretty good generalist training from the standpoint of not taking things apart, but putting them together. To oversimplify, I figured that lawyers picked things apart--

LASKEY

And architects put it back together.

ALEXANDER

In any event, I went into the production- control division of Lockheed, the function of which is to get everything that goes into building an airplane at the right place at the right time. And I went from that to assistant to the works manager of factory two, which was across the street from the original main factory.

LASKEY

This is the Lockheed in the [San Fernando] Valley?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Before that I was asked to be in charge of what was called "area 300." It was part of production control. The management decided to tap the womanpower of the San Joaquin Valley by setting up sub-assembly plants from Bakersfield to Fresno. This would require shipping things out of the mother plant and receiving them back. Here again, it was a question of getting parts to the right place at the right time and supplying these plants. So there was a control point, area 300, in a big warehouse across the street from the main factory, and I was put in charge of that. That was a hair-raising experience. I was called into a meeting, top management, and asked if I would accept the job, and I said, "Yeah, I'll tackle anything." I didn't know what was going to happen. But a ditto memo went out to every department manager saying what they were going to do and that I would be in charge of the control point as of a certain date and that each department head was to give me so many employees. The result was that each department head would look at his personnel file and find the troublemakers that he wanted to get rid of and send them to me. The first few days my telephone was ringing every minute; I couldn't put it down without its ringing again. It just drove me crazy. Then the first load of stuff to go out to these plants accumulated much faster than we could possibly ship them out, so that there was this long line of stuff on dollies waiting to be shipped out that extended way back into the main plant. So I was being cursed right and left because I wasn't getting this stuff out fast enough. I was given a supreme record keeper. Our main job was to keep track of things: what went out and what came in. And, you know, if everything is cool, steady, and systematic you know what's happening. But when it's a frantic rush to get these plants established from Bakersfield to Fresno, good god, everything just went to pot. But one fortunate thing was that in order to run these outside plants successfully, we had to have-- What were they called?

LASKEY

Expediters.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, expediters, that's right. And fortunately, along with the guys who had records with various departments, I got some real pirates. If I needed something, I'd just call my pirates in and tell them we had to have a certain number of a certain part out at the Fresno plant. They'd go out and find them, even if they had to climb walls and steal stuff.

LASKEY

It must have been some department.

ALEXANDER

Oh, that was a hair-raising experience. When that subsided so that it was manageable, then I went to the works manager in factory B, where I had an odd assortment of personnel under my control, including some expediters, including thirteen sort of mother hens. What would you call them?

LASKEY

They sort of oversaw?

ALEXANDER

No. The plant was overloaded with women who were having their first experience on the assembly lines. If you think women have problems, you have no idea what problems they had during the war. In an entirely new environment, all of a sudden out of the family home, all of a sudden they were being supervised by a man, or whatever.

LASKEY

Counselors.

ALEXANDER

Counselors, right. I think I had thirteen counselors reporting to me. Women problems-- jeez! My counselors needed counseling.

LASKEY

Well, it was a whole new world for everybody. Not just for the women but for the men too.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right. And there were all kinds of jealousies that I'd never run up against before. Well, this organization, in the short time I was there, which was like four years or something like that, the total personnel grew from nine thousand to ninety thousand, or whatever. I just don't remember the figures now, but it was just an enormous surge of employees.

LASKEY

So you're dealing with a bureaucracy. You had never really dealt with a bureaucracy at that level before.

ALEXANDER

Not before and [not] after. I'd never been in an organization where everybody was struggling to get one step ahead on the ladder. I had my swing shift equivalent, the guy in charge of my area 300 swing shift, who figured, with very well-founded facts, that he was a much better man than I was, because he had been in the aircraft business for a long time and he knew by number every part of the PV- 2 (which was thousands of parts) and I didn't know anything like that. I heard that he was after my job, wanted to get the day shift. So I talked to my immediate superior, and he said, "Why don't you take a vacation and see how he makes out?" So I took a one-week or maybe it was two-week vacation, to let him take my job while I was gone, see what happened. It worked. I mean, he didn't hang himself, but he couldn't handle it very well, just from the standpoint of handling people. He had a relatively quiet time on swing shift. Everything went to hell in the day when everybody was there.

LASKEY

His thirteen women counselors. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

Well, this was area 300, dealing with the northern plants. Well, I learned a lot about organization, some of which I could apply, but not much, in architecture.

LASKEY

But you figure it was your architectural training that allowed you to deal with the problems at Lockheed.

ALEXANDER

I think so.

LASKEY

Without the benefit of knowing the four thousand parts of the airplane.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, sure.

LASKEY

Did you stay with Lockheed after the war?

ALEXANDER

No. I was offered a department-head position, but I decided that that was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an architect on my own. I remember we had an AIA [American Institute of Architects] chapter meeting the night of V-J-Day. That was the final, you know--not V-E [Day] , V-J-Day. Two architects asked me to go into partnership with them. The first was Sumner Spaulding and the second was Bill [William] Pereira.

LASKEY

That's very impressive.

ALEXANDER

In both cases I turned them down. I said, "Before the war I was depending on other people, other partners and so forth. I'd like to tackle it on my own and see what I can do by myself." It was just a feeling I had. So that's the way it was. I was determined to be an architect anyway.

LASKEY

Well, by the end of the war you were already involved in the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission. How did that come about?

ALEXANDER

Well, before the war I had been a member of Telesis South. Telesis was an organization founded in San Francisco by a group of architects who, in the case of San Francisco, where they were so physically close from the standpoint of office location, could meet every noon or anytime they wanted to--they could get together easily. One of their members is now living in Berkeley. He became a member of the city planning staff here. What the hell is his name? Mel Scott. Mel told some of us about this organization in San Francisco named Telesis interested in city planning. We formed one in Southern California which had to meet at night. People would come from miles around. One guy came down from Bakersfield every time we had a meeting, for instance. This was a group of young whippersnappers who were going to change the world. Also in Pasadena, when I was living there I was called upon by a committee of the League of Women Voters to recommend a course study in housing and to speak to them on the housing problem in Pasadena. So my message was to forget about housing for Pasadena. What they needed was city planning. "Okay. What would you give us for a bibliography on that?" I gave them a bibliography. Pretty soon they knew more about city planning than I did.

LASKEY

The League of Women Voters has a way of doing that.

ALEXANDER

So the League of Women Voters committee had to go to the statewide organization to get permission to have a subcommittee on city planning, to include that, at least, in the housing problem. Oh, they were hotshots. For one thing, it was sort of outrageous, the equivalent of a city council. I don't know what they call them in Pasadena, governors or something like that. The board of governors, is it?

LASKEY

I don't know. We'll find out.

ALEXANDER

The equivalent of the city council of Pasadena [board of directors] decided to place the function of city planning in the sanitary engineers' department--that is, the sewer department.

LASKEY

What was it doing there?

ALEXANDER

Believe it or not, that was their proposal. The League of Women Voters committee went down and pounded the table until the board members saw the light and put on a nationwide search for a director of city planning--which is something I had recommended. They found a guy who had just resigned as head of the city planning department at Columbia University. James Marshall Miller was his name. He became the first city planning director of Pasadena. Later on, many years later, he worked for me in charge of my city planning projects. But, meantime, in addition to raising hell with the city fathers in Pasadena, they [the League of Women Voters] organized a series of lectures at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] . They had six lectures on city planning. They really became a force for improving the city, organizing through the chamber of commerce and other organizations in Pasadena.

LASKEY

Were you involved with them through this whole cycle during all this time?

ALEXANDER

Well, not intimately with the League of Women Voters, but I was kept in touch with the organization they helped found. In fact, let's see, what did they call it? I helped them organize a citizens-- You might call it an advisory committee on city planning for the city that had a newsletter that went out all through the war. I kept getting copies when I set up practice after the war. It was called [the Pasadena Citizens Planning Council] . I was involved in one of their acts before the war came along. It was an exhibit at the Grace Nicholson Gallery, an exhibit on city planning. The league put that one on for something like $250.

LASKEY

The entire exhibit?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and their blood, sweat, and tears. The son of one of the League of Women Voters' members-- She had a son named Michael. Michael went around Pasadena to look at this, that, and the other. Then they had these big photographs and illustrations of what he saw in Pasadena. So it was sort of a mirror of what Pasadenans could see for the first time of themselves.

LASKEY

How interesting.

ALEXANDER

It was very effective. At the same time I was working on--what the hell was that called?--an organization that was meeting at--

LASKEY

Was this the organization with Carey McWilliams?

ALEXANDER

Arts, sciences, and profession council? No, that was not it.

LASKEY

It was close to that. We'll check that. [Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions.]

ALEXANDER

You know the Jake Zeitlin who had his studio at that time on Carondelet [Street]?

LASKEY

Oh, really? Near downtown.

ALEXANDER

Right in downtown. I'm trying to think, how was it organized? I know we got $5,000 from the [Los Angeles County] Board of Supervisors to put on an exhibit of city planning in the county museum. That was also before the war started.

LASKEY

You mean the L.A. County Museum? That would have been down in Exposition Park then, right?

ALEXANDER

Yes . But I don't remember how in god's name that was organized. Anyway, I know I was working on that, and that went on about the same time as the League of Women Voters' exhibit in Pasadena. It cost $5,000 and a lot of hard work and was no more effective than the one that the league put on, I would say. We had some great big maps. [Richard J.] Neutra worked on it.

LASKEY

The one in Pasadena?

ALEXANDER

No, the big one.

LASKEY

Oh, the big one.

ALEXANDER

But, I don't remember how it was organized. I guess the last meeting of Telesis occurred in Jake Zeitlin's studio on Carondelet the night of the infamous air raid, [Lieutenant General John C] De Witt's false air raid of Los Angeles.

LASKEY

What was that like?

ALEXANDER

Well, what it was like was that everybody decided to go home. All of the lights in the city were out, and my wife and I had left our kids in the charge of a babysitter and we knew that she would be disturbed. We were damn well determined to get home. We went all the way home on the Pasadena Freeway without headlights. No other cars that I could see.

LASKEY

Did you have any idea what was happening?

ALEXANDER

No, we just knew there was an air raid warning. We didn't know if it was an air raid or not. It was only very shortly after that we found out it was a big intentional scare by this stupid General De Witt.

LASKEY

He was also the one who was very involved with the incarceration of the Japanese.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right. Well, may his soul rest in peace. [laughter]

LASKEY

Yeah.

ALEXANDER

Well, anyway, we were getting to what happened on the planning commission. I had been very noisy, in other words, about city planning.

LASKEY

So you had been involved with the League of Women Voters, you had been on the arts and sciences council, you had written some things.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, diatribes.

LASKEY

Diatribes. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

I had been a member of-- Sumner Spaulding had a group meeting on city planning which he called his "commandos." This was a popular name at the time because Great Britain had the commandos that made raids, and we were going to make a raid on the city and make it sit up and fly right. So that was another outlet.

LASKEY

Now, Sumner Spaulding I always consider as a beaux- arts or city-beautiful, a very traditional kind of architect. This sounds like he —

ALEXANDER

No, he was a rabble-rouser. You may be thinking of Sumner Hunt.

LASKEY

I could have the two of them mixed, but I thought--

ALEXANDER

Sumner Spaulding, sure he was beaux-arts trained, but at that time everybody was. But he was a radical rabble-rouser in a way.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Yep. And very provocative. He saw, before anybody that I knew, the meaning of the atom bombs--maybe with the exception of Einstein. Hardly anyone foresaw the consequences .

LASKEY

But as far as the community here was concerned.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. He was a very exciting guy. Anyway, we had a group that devoted our attention to city planning. I was very vocal about it, and it was at a time when very few cities in California had a city planning commission or department. And I was going around talking about how important this was. So, in the meantime, before the war came the Shaw scandal. Mayor [Frank L.] Shaw was ousted by a referendum, or recall I mean. And eventually Fletcher Bowron became mayor. The main complaint against Shaw was that in the [Los Angeles City] Planning Department there was an open buying and selling of planning privileges. So one of the major tasks that Bowron addressed was reforming the planning law in the city and changing the department and so forth. He appointed an outstanding group of five conunissioners, including Bill [William H.] Schuchardt--who was president--and the president of Occidental College. What was his name?

LASKEY

Remsen [D.] Bird.

ALEXANDER

Remsen Bird, oh yeah. Bird resigned at some time. Well, I guess he resigned as president of Occidental College. He stepped down, or out; he wanted to move up to Monterey. His successor, an economist, was somebody I had known and worked with, maybe even debated, I don't know. Coons became the president of Occidental.

LASKEY

Arthur?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, Arthur [G.] Coons. Well, anyway, I really don't know the story as to how I was identified by Bowron to be asked to replace Remsen Bird. But when Remsen Bird resigned, Bowron asked me to take the job.

LASKEY

Had you met Bowron before?

ALEXANDER

Never met him before. I do know this, that according to Bowron ' s secretary [Albine P. Norton] (whom he later married), they had made an exhaustive search of my record by getting letters of recommendation or whatever from all kinds of sources, such as the head of the AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations] .

LASKEY

That's interesting. How did they get to the AFL?

ALEXANDER

Bowron, evidently, had a way of going about investigating people that he was going to appoint to something through a broad range or spectrum that I would not have believed. That man became a regent. What was his name? Do you know?

LASKEY

I don't know. [Cornelius J. Haggerty]

ALEXANDER

Well, anyway, somebody I'd never met. The United Auto Workers [UAW] had asked me, while I was still working at Lockheed, if at the end of the war I would be head of their housing movement. The UAW had the most advanced organization in all kinds of social issues such as housing.

LASKEY

Was this when [Walter] Reuther was still involved?

ALEXANDER

Yes. I was invited to be head of that. I had a long session one night with Carey McWilliams as to what I should do. I was undecided.

LASKEY

Since we've mentioned Carey McWilliams a couple of times, you might want to identify what your relationship was with him.

ALEXANDER

Well, the only way I got to know him was by being a member of the board of the arts, sciences, professions council of the-- What was it called? citizens-- Well, anyway, the arts, sciences, professions council. Carey McWilliams and my dentist, Don McQueen--

LASKEY

Your dentist?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. And the [California] Supreme Court justice's brother. The Supreme Court justice who had been on there before anybody, [Stanley] Mosk.

LASKEY

Stanley Mosk.

ALEXANDER

Stan Mosk ' s brother [Edward Mosk]. Anyway, I'm naming the board members of the arts, sciences, professions council, and this was the way I knew Carey McWilliams. I went to him for advice because I knew he knew labor people and so forth. Anyway, I decided not to accept the offer. But that was the way that somebody at Lockheed, representing UAW, was evidently asked by this guy who became a regent, the labor leader--I used to know his name. I just don't remember these damn things. Anyway, I think he also undoubtedly asked the head of the AIA chapter, who I think was Herb [Herbert J.] Powell. He got a lot of comments from various people, and as I say, I'd made a lot of noise.

LASKEY

They knew where you stood.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Mayor Bowron was very active in the council of mayors, the National Council of Mayors, so that he got their points of view and was very familiar with the point of view of any eastern mayor to whom public housing was the greatest blessing to take care of a real need and problem in the community. So he was not prepared for the violent resistance of the real estate lobby in California to the whole public housing issue. So he defended me right and left.

LASKEY

Now, are you talking about the Proposition 14 debate, or does it go back before Proposition 14?

ALEXANDER

He didn't have to defend me before that.

LASKEY

Oh. [laughter] Well, Proposition 14 was for statewide public housing, is that right? It was there that you did head-on battle with the real estate lobby. But hadn't they also been instrumental in preventing development and city planning within the city of Los Angeles? I'm thinking about Bunker Hill and some of the other developments that were talked about as possible redevelopment areas and then stopped. Or wasn't that the real estate lobby?

ALEXANDER

I think it was. Well, I was appointed to the planning commission in 1945. What were the dates? What was VJ-Day? Was that '46?

LASKEY

'Forty-six or '47.

ALEXANDER

August 8 or something like that, '46? Or was it 1947?

LASKEY

It was '46 or '47 [August 14, 1945].

ALEXANDER

But anyway, part of my tenure was very quiet. Just hard work on things to come, preparing for the holocaust which came at the end of the war when all of a sudden this pent-up need for housing and so forth just went wild and the housing industry suddenly became clogged with, not only good actors, but some people that I thought of as real gangsters. The gangster type suddenly found an easy way to make a buck with other people's money. And Congress was so wild in trying to promote housing that they opened the door to anybody who was willing to organize something like this without a nickel of his own money in it and make a million. I figured there were a great many abuses there, but these people did not want any competition from public housing, even though all kinds of protections were enacted to protect their vested interest in private housing by making a gap called the Klutznick gap.

LASKEY

What kind of gap?

ALEXANDER

A Klutznick gap. You know Phil [Philip A.] Klutznick? Ever heard of him?

LASKEY

No .

ALEXANDER

Well, he's been very prominent in supporting Israel. He's a Chicago homebuilder, a very decent chap. A gap of eligibility, when a person is eligible for public housing and not eligible for it. I don't want to explain all that stuff. But anyway, we're getting back to the planning commission stuff, or did you want to do something else?

LASKEY

No. I want you to talk about the planning commission. You, the commission, Los Angeles, housing.

ALEXANDER

Well, another thing about being appointed-- I don't know how important this was, but it must have probably had some importance. During my fifth year at Cornell [University] , my last year, there was a weekly seminar given by a visiting professor, a Cornell graduate in architecture who had been born and grew up in Wisconsin. And I attended this seminar, which was really a delightful relaxation, in which we looked at architectural magazines and talked about architecture. It was a lot of fun. And this old boy turned out to be Bill Schuchardt who was on the planning commission. He was very well-off. He had never needed to work for a living as an architect, but was a very gentlemanly and scholarly character of whom I was very fond. So undoubtedly he put in a good word for me and that sort of thing. He had become very hard of hearing and--

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 3, 1986

LASKEY

We were going into a discussion of Forest Lawn [Mortuaries] and its battle with the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission. It might be a good idea to refresh us on the history of the city planning commission development in L.A.

ALEXANDER

The first city planning commission of Los Angeles was founded in 1920, largely as a result of the tireless efforts of [G.] Gordon Whitnall, who in about 1910-- Do you mind if I refresh my memory on this?

LASKEY

Oh, no, go ahead.

ALEXANDER

Well, preceding that, in 1911 the preliminary transportation study of Los Angeles by Bion J. Arnold was issued through the [Throop] Polytechnic Institute, which is now Caltech [California Institute of Technology] . That was followed by the Robinson plan, so-called, prepared by Charles Mulford Robinson for a study commission appointed by Mayor George Alexander. It was a plan which included some street-widening recommendations and which emphasized the city beautiful, including a civic center scheme which inspired many successive plans, giving this feature a planning priority in the eyes of the public. In 1913, City Councilman [Fred C.] Wheeler introduced an ordinance to form a city planning commission, which gained substantial public support and was studied in committee and amended by the [Los Angeles City] Council, but never adopted for seven years . During the first decade of the twentieth century when motion pictures came to the city, the Automobile Club of Southern California was born and the population of the city increased from 102,000 to 319,000.

LASKEY

In one decade?

ALEXANDER

An alarming 212 percent in one decade. That alerted a few citizens to the desirability of planning physical growth of the area, and Whitnall became a zealous missionary for the cause, devoting the following ten years to developing broad public support for the concept, after which he plunged in as a self-taught lifelong professional at a time when formal academic training in planning was unavailable. At the same time as the Wheeler ordinance was proposed, there was an extensive city planning exhibit prepared by the American City Bureau of New York, and it was displayed in Los Angeles under the auspices of the Municipal League [of Los Angeles] , financed by the city and county. Gordon Whitnall eagerly attended every day, registering the names of all who expressed more than a passing interest in the subject. Immediately on the close of the exhibit he rounded up a few prominent citizens, who joined him in inviting the signers to a meeting in which the city planning association was formed. In 1918, as an incident in the business of the association, Mayor Frederick [T.] Woodman appointed a civic centers committee, which became known as the [William] Mulholland Committee, after its chairman. It recommended the present location of the civic center--the one where it finally landed--and it was received and filed. And as I said, the commission was formed in 1920. Believe it or not, to give the commission the broadest community support, it was given fifty-one members .

LASKEY

Fifty-one members?

ALEXANDER

Serving three years, with seventeen terms expiring each year and each member representing some organization. Naturally, Gordon Whitnall was given the unenviable task of organizing and managing it. He organized the commission and nine committees dealing with various phases of the work, the chairmen of which became the executive committee, meeting weekly, while the commission met monthly. During the twenties, that's when the real surge in population came. More than 650,000 people came into the city of Los Angeles within the city limits between 1920 and 1930. So they were facing a real challenge, you can imagine.

LASKEY

I think I read somewhere that the population of Los Angeles regularly doubled every decade the first five decades of the twentieth century.

ALEXANDER

Well, actually it got a slow start. The first hundred years accounted for 10,000 people.

LASKEY

I know. Isn't that amazing?

ALEXANDER

The next twenty years 100,000--that is, it grew to 102,000, actually. The next thirty years it grew to 1,000,000, the next twenty years to 2,000,000, and the next thirty years to over 3,000,000. That's approximately.

LASKEY

Right.

ALEXANDER

That big surge in the decade from '20 to '30 was just fabulous.

LASKEY

What would have accounted for the large surge in the twenties?

ALEXANDER

Well, the [Los Angeles] harbor had just been completed. World War I ended, and the oil boom came in--I mean the second oil boom. This oil boom was right down near the harbor, where you could just move a ship up to the oil pump and--

LASKEY

And fill it up.

ALEXANDER

--fill it up. And that caused a land boom, and combined, this was just a tremendous surge. Nineteen twenty-three was probably the biggest year of people coming into Los Angeles. If you know the dumpy little architecture of the time-- attempts at Swiss chalets, the best ones of which had long since been built. You recognize it all over Los Angeles, bungalows--

LASKEY

Bungalows.

ALEXANDER

Well, "planning challenge" was the name of the game.

LASKEY

So it was this major increase in population, this population explosion, that was really the trigger for the need for planning in the city.

ALEXANDER

Owens Valley water had been brought to Los Angeles, the port of Los Angeles was opened, and World War I had been completed. Boom! The rate of population growth had reduced from over 200,000 to less than 100,000, but even more people had been added to the population than in the previous decade. The commission had just been formed in time to witness the city's second oil and land booms and to try to deal with the population increase from a little more than 500,000 to almost 1,250,000 persons. During this wild period the unwieldy fifty-one-member commission was replaced after five hectic years by a five-member body, and the secretary became Manager-director Whitnall. Since Secretary Whitnall and one stenographer constituted the entire staff during the first five years, such a monumental basic task as mapping the city could only have been accomplished by the regular field and office staffs of the engineering department under Whitnall. Due to pressure from the realty board and the chamber of commerce, zoning became the first order of business.

LASKEY

Why was that?

ALEXANDER

That's a conservative protective measure, zoning is. It's to preserve the status quo, to keep unwarranted intruders out of the district. "This is zoned for R-1, and you've got to keep it R-1. This is pristine." And Huber Smutz, a recent graduate of the University of California School of Public Administration, was selected by Whitnall to serve as zoning engineer. Although zoning probably originated in Los Angeles and landmark legal cases which established the constitutionality of the zoning concept arose in the city, Los Angeles's zoning at this time was considered archaic.

LASKEY

When was the first Los Angeles zoning law?

ALEXANDER

Well, let's see. I don't know if I have that here. It was prior to the establishing of a commission. There was a--

LASKEY

I can find that. I think I have it in my notes somewhere .

ALEXANDER

Sy [Simon] Eisner would tell you in a minute. Oh, in 1904 Los Angeles had established a residential district, prohibiting industrial activities therein, and in 1908 most of the city as it then existed was divided into industrial and residential districts. In the following decade several special zones were created to cover individual uses, such as zones for undertakers, cemeteries, poultry slaughterhouses, and so forth. But there was no comprehensive, consistent zoning plan. The most prominent comprehensive zoning ordinance in existence at that time was that of New York City. That became a model for a lot of cities, including Los Angeles at the time. Shortly after establishment of the five-member commission, an ordinance was adopted providing for five use zones: single-family residential, multiple residential and institutional, commercial, light industrial, and heavy industrial. By the time less than half of the city was zoned, it became obvious that three or four times as much property had been zoned for commercial use as could ever be used and that such zoning often blighted the property as owners waited for commercial development that never would come.

LASKEY

Oh, that's interesting.

ALEXANDER

And that went on for years and is still the case. A similar imbalance was observed in the two residential zones, and these features would persist for more than half a century.

LASKEY

How was the problem finally solved?

ALEXANDER

Well, it wasn't solved. It is still out of balance. There have been major attempts, and some of them successful, at what you might call rollback of zoning uses or zoning density, intensity of use and so forth. But we still have an ample supply of commercial, not industrial, but commercial and multiple-residential zoning.

LASKEY

So it would be to the advantage of the developers to have these large areas for commercial and multiple residents. Was that the reason?

ALEXANDER

Well, people have stars in their eyes about what a commercial organization will pay for property. They heard about this place that my grandfather bought for so much and he sold it for ten times that because it became First and Main. Well, that's okay for that particular piece of property, but if, in fact, you hold out because you're waiting for that time when you get ten times what you paid for it, you'll never use it, you'll never sell it. That's the situation that still exists to some extent, but not as bad as it once was. In 1930, the Los Angeles zoning laws were amended by establishing four residential zones, two commercial zones, and two industrial zones. But zoning continued to be limited to the use of property, largely neglecting space around buildings, intensity of use, and other controls. The R-2 and R-3 zones limited heights to two and a half and four stories, respectively, and lot coverages to 60 or 70 percent for a corner lot. The principal improvements were administrative: providing procedures for zone changes and so forth. The staff proceeded with the enormous task of applying the new law to about 200 square miles [which were] previously zones A and B, as well as 242 square miles unzoned, including 170 square miles in the San Fernando Valley annexed May 22, 1915. That was unzoned completely. And when I came on the commission we were still faced with this crazy patchwork of some places not zoned at all, some A and B, and some loosely zoned according to these five zones. Having been unaffected by a previous nationwide recession, civic leaders of Los Angeles were surprised when the Great Depression finally included them. [laughter] Little action took place in either planning or development. The irregular colonial street pattern between First and Boyd streets from Main [Street] to Hill [Street] was realigned during that period. City mapmaking continued and a landing field for airmail was proposed to be built over the railroad tracks at Union Station. No one could conceive that air travel would eclipse the railroad as a passenger carrier. In 1932, a proposal was made to make Olvera Street a tourist attraction. And the following year a geodetic survey of the city was started using a federal grant. And then Frank [L.] Shaw came in and William [N.] Thorpe was director-manager of planning, and all hell broke loose. In 1935 the [Los Angeles City] Planning Department staff included Huber Smutz, [William K.] Woodruff, [Henry] Wall, Les Brinkman, Simons, Carl Hourston--although he spelled it different ways at different periods in his life.

LASKEY

That's interesting.

ALEXANDER

All assembled by Gordon Whitnall, and still on the staff after World War II while I was on the commission. Plans were proposed for a municipal auto park, expansion of the city hall to the east, and a municipal auditorium/opera house/convention hall to replace the old high school on Fort Moore Hill.

LASKEY

Now, this was all--

ALEXANDER

Nineteen thirty-five.

LASKEY

Well, that's when Shaw was still mayor.

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

When was he recalled? It's either '38 or '39. [Frank L. Shaw was recalled from office September 16, 1938.]

ALEXANDER

It was recognized that Chinatown would be eliminated by Union Station and might be relocated. On January 1, 1935, a yard ordinance became effective, defining the space, setback from the side lines, front, and rear. In 1936, the city received electricity from Boulder Dam; the Griffith Observatory was built; and oil drilling in Venice was a major subject of planning attention. In 1937 and '38, in spite of severe storms and floods, the local economy started to improve, evidenced by a 35 percent increase in building permits. Then we get into the forties. The most exciting and influential period in the existence of the city planning department was the decade of the forties, when, especially because of the war coming along, there was so little action possible that they had time to think and plan. And there were so damn many problems caused by this tremendous influx of population in the twenties and thirties that they had to do something about it. Fortunately, just before the war, the Pacific Southwest Academy, of which Arthur G. Coons, the economist and president of the sponsoring organization, was president-- They had a conference which resulted in the development of a volume called Preface to a Master Plan, edited by [George W.] Robbins and L. Deming Tilton, who was well-known in planning circles. I don't remember what he did, but I knew him at the time. It was financed by the [John Randolph] Haynes Foundation. And chapters of the book- -contributed by local experts on various elements of the physical structure of Los Angeles--outlined the current state of the city and became the agenda of tasks to be tackled by the recently reorganized planning department of the city of Los Angeles. It couldn't have come at a better time. Reformer [John R.] Haynes had just been responsible for the adoption and legislation whereby a corrupt Mayor Shaw was recalled and replaced by Fletcher Bowron, a judge, who then became receiver of the city and was elected mayor in 1939.

LASKEY

So Haynes was one of that group--

ALEXANDER

Yes, right.

LASKEY

--in the mid-thirties that was involved in trying to clean up Los Angeles.

ALEXANDER

He was mainly responsible for the recall law that made it possible to get rid of Shaw. Then Bowron was at first receiver of the city as a judge, and then he was elected mayor. Other people who were in that group- - [Griffith J.] Griffith, who donated Griffith Park to the city, and his son were wildly enthusiastic Bowron supporters and denouncers of Shaw. Since a prominent feature of corruption under Mayor Shaw had been the open buying and selling of planning permits, spot zone changes, and variances, Mayor Bowron took a particular interest in restructuring the planning process.

LASKEY

Were these spot variances and spot zoning changes a way of combatting or getting around the zoning ordinances?

ALEXANDER

No, the zoning ordinances of the time permitted changes in zone, but there were no minimum boundary requirements. In other words, you could change the zone of a piece of property in the middle of a block and not the rest of the block. That sort of thing.

LASKEY

But isn't that a loophole, then, in the zoning system?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. However, it was obviously never intended, and it was obviously not good citizenship to offer to buy it [a change in zone] and to offer to sell it as a commissioner.

LASKEY

So this is where the corruption came in. Not in the fact that the possibility existed for spot zoning changes, but that they were sold, that they could be bought and sold.

ALEXANDER

Well, Mayor Bowron, first of all, chose some commissioners who were plainly disinterested, such as Charles E. Scott; Remsen D. Bird, president of Occidental College; William H. Schuchardt, retired architect, past member of the art commission and public lands commission of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And after a nationwide search, Charles B. Bennett and Milton Breivogel, of Milwaukee and Racine respectively, were selected as director of planning and principal planner, bringing vital leadership, public respect, and knowledgeable direction to the staff. Under Bowron, all variances were placed in the hands of a newly created chief zoning administrator, and the office was occupied by Huber Smutz, one of the staff members selected by Gordon Whitnall in 1926, who filled it with the utmost rectitude, probity, and serious industry for thirty-eight years.

LASKEY

Thirty-eight years.

ALEXANDER

Boy, he had a ramrod down his back, you know. He was terrific. A little bit too much, sometimes. He was honest to the point of pain. The commission was given as much power as any appointed body should have, being overridden by not less than a vote of two-thirds of the city council, or by three-fourths of its members if the mayor sided with the commission by a veto. In most cases, such as around here [Berkeley], the planning commission is simply advisory. They say, "We think this, " and the city council by a simple majority vote disregards it. In the case of Los Angeles, a case doesn't go to the council unless it's appealed. Then, when it does go to the council, they have to override--if they do, by a two-thirds vote. And if it's something that the mayor can veto and he does-- and that's pretty tough. I think it's as far as any power ought to go over an elected official. The zoning administrator's decisions could be appealed only to a three-member zoning appeals board, thus removing variances entirely from politics. From there you can only go to the courts.

LASKEY

I see.

ALEXANDER

The commissioner's decisions were forwarded to the city council, where only extremely rare and presumably important cases were reversed. Other charter amendments defined the duties and functions of the commission, the responsibilities and authority of the director, and created the planning department headed by the director and the city coordinating committee, of which the planning director was chairman.

LASKEY

Well, since some of these ordinances seem to strike right at the heart of the developers, did Bowron have any problem getting these, the new--?

ALEXANDER

No. The public was so alarmed and wrought up by the Shaw recall that everybody was gung ho for what Bowron was proposing. Well, Preface to a Master Plan, that volume--which was seminal--went to the publisher before Pearl Harbor, after which the War Production Board prevented any physical action to remedy the many pressing problems outlined in the book, but giving the planning department staff time to address some of these problems in the planning stage in preparation for the end of the war, when accumulated pressures would explode and make quiet, thoughtful planning almost impossible. As urgent as were some of the problems caused by unprecedented growth and neglect for ten years due to the worldwide depressed economy, the authors could not foresee the wartime frenzy of shipbuilding and aircraft production, nor the deluge of new inhabitants during and after the end of the conflict, compounding and making the solution of these urban problems critical after five more years of forced neglect. Workers engaged in shipbuilding increased from 84 in 1940 to 95,000 in 1944, and in aircraft production, from 15,930 in 1939 to 275,000 in 1944. The L.A. birthrate per thousand, which had plummeted from 22 in 1924 to 12.2 in 1936, rose to 18.5 in 1943, making prewar predictions even more vulnerable. Just to give you an example of the expert estimates of the time, there is a background paper on population in Preface to a Master Plan by Constantine Panunzio, one of the board of directors of the Pacific Southwest Academy. He wrote that, "A liberal estimate would set the population in Los Angeles city in 1980 at the very most at not more than 2,150,000." Actually, the city population almost reached that figure by 1950, and by 1980 it was close to 3,000,000. In 1941, in addition to the basic charter-planning amendment adopted by the electorate, the city council approved a civic center plan and a master plan for Pacific Ocean shoreline development. The commission approved a 3,332 acre community development plan for Westchester and a master plan of parkways. And a WPA [Works Progress Administration] land-use mapping project covering 450 square miles was also completed. That was 1941, the year of Pearl Harbor.

LASKEY

Now, the master plan of parkways was actually the freeway plan, right?

ALEXANDER

Well, no. It depends on what year you're talking about. See, there was a parkway plan proposed by Robinson way back in 1910 or something like that. I mentioned that.

LASKEY

Yeah, 1911, the first transportation study. That was a parkway plan.

ALEXANDER

Today's freeway plan doesn't vary a great deal from that, as a matter of fact. But it was not proposed at that time that it be elevated and completely cross-traffic free. It was not proposed as a freeway plan, it was proposed as a parkway plan--city beautiful. The civic center attention came first because that had a sort of appeal to the public imagination. The Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects [AIA] collaborated with the planning commission and staff in preparing a civic center plan.

LASKEY

Now, the civic center plan still maintains the city-beautiful outlook.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, sure. Well, this plan proposed a concept, most of which is evident more than forty years later, and it was one of several, starting with Robinson. But in 1923, location became a subject of dispute among the members of the city planning commission, which numbered fifty-one men and women. Some sixty prominent architects had banded together for the purpose of rendering personal service for public buildings. In the year 1924 they prepared, at their own cost, a comprehensive civic center plan, which was approved by the county supervisors. But since the architects hoped to corner all the architectural work, this was hardly a charitable enterprise, and they were soon sued and disbanded by the court. Did you hear that from [Albert C] Martin, Jr., by the way? Because it was his dad [Albert C. Martin, Sr.] that brought the suit.

LASKEY

Yeah, this is the suit against the Allied Architects [of Los Angeles] and their city-beautiful plan.

ALEXANDER

Right. Avoiding conflicts of interest by keeping the authors anonymous, the architects' organization in 1940 prepared another civic center plan and painstakingly obtained endorsements from every city in the county before gaining approval of the city council and the county board of supervisors at a joint session. Changes made in the plan since then have been highly beneficial, such as moving the power and light building [Department of Water and Power Building] west to make room for the Music Center [of Los Angeles County] and moving the county courts onto the mall. The original concept of a grandiose county courts complex with Saint Peter 's-like arms embracing the passengers arriving at the Union depot would have become ridiculous, in view of the fate of rail passenger traffic, and would have almost obliterated the remains of the old Spanish plaza. Although the existing civic center east of the Music Center is lifeless, pompous, dull, and does not approach the design quality or the vision outlined by Schuchardt, it is nevertheless one of the most impressive groups of public buildings in the United States outside of Washington, D.C. Schuchardt even had the imagination to forecast, "In another few decades, traffic needs may become a relatively unimportant consideration. It is even conceivable that traffic may altogether cease to be a problem in the area and in passing out will leave in its wake a disappointing group of buildings on which many millions of dollars have been expended." Stranger things have happened--to the Union Station, for instance. There was another group-- let's see. Two department store heads, P. [Percy] G. Winnett of Bullock's [Department Stores] and-- Who was the head of, not the Broadway, but the furniture store?

LASKEY

The Barker Brothers.

ALEXANDER

The Barker Brothers. Neil Petry, is that the name? Anyway, it was mainly P. [Percy] G. Winnett who set up a private fund and organization to deal with problems that cut across city and county lines [Greater Los Angeles Citizens Committee] . And one of those things was, of course, the civic center, which was mainly county, but included city and federal and so on. So he set up a study group on that headed by the architect in charge, Sandy Turner.

LASKEY

Sandy Turner.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, do you know him? LASKEY : No .

ALEXANDER

Well, he's still around. He goes to AIA meetings and so forth. He's well-known, even among current architects. Changes in the civic center plan, such as the parking garage under the mall, things like that, were still going on when I was on the commission in the forties. And in 1947, the planning department proposed community civic centers and prepared plans for twelve branch administrative centers in 1949. That was carried out likewise and paralleled by the [Los Angeles] County Regional Planning Commission. What was especially impressive was to have a city set up branch centers all over the place, which was a very good idea. Then the streets and highways-- At the dawn of the twentieth century, most great American cities we know today had already attained their prominence and basic form, while Los Angeles contained only 102,000 people scattered over forty-three square miles. Other big cities already had extensive networks of surface-street railways, subways, and elevated rapid transit, and by 1910 had largely completed these systems on which their inhabitants relied almost entirely for nonrecreational mobility. Although the Pacific Electric Railway, advertised as the world's greatest interurban line, was started in 1900, its mission was not the movement of people within the city but the sale of real estate at hitherto undeveloped locations in Southern California.

LASKEY

Something that is not pointed out very often.

ALEXANDER

The L.A. Railway Corporation did provide street railway service for the area at the turn of the century. But its resources were hopelessly overcome by a tenfold increase in both land and people in thirty years. More influential than the inadequacy of public transportation was the availability of the private automobile, which occurred prior to the major growth of the city. Pershing Square should have an enormous fountain with a pedestal on which there is a flivver--as the idol of the city and the reason for its being the automobile city. The Automobile Club of Southern California was founded before 1900 and soon served not only the rich pleasure driver but the average Angeleno, who found his flivver at first a liberator, permitting him freedom to live on inexpensive land anywhere in the city, and then an absolute necessity to which he became a slave in idyllic bondage. For the purpose of real estate subdivision and rectangular-lot sales, major streets in the city had been laid out about a mile apart, east-west and north-south, with the impartiality and lack of focus suited to the universal, ubiquitous presence of the family car. In the 1941 Preface to a Master Plan, the chief engineer of the Automobile Club of Southern California, E. [Ernest] E. East, could truly say, "With a few exceptions, we have in an area of some 1,235 square miles of metropolitan area no district given over exclusively to residential purposes. Hot dog stands, dairy farms, cattle-feeding pens, cafes, cocktail bars, dance halls, schools, churches, manufacturing plants, retail stores, gravel pits, junkyards, and oil wells are intermingled throughout the area. During the past eight years, 200,000 people have been killed or injured in motor vehicle accidents within the area . " The contribution of the automobile to the form of the city appeared to be formlessness. Mr. East, however, proposed a solution. He proposed, "a network of motorways designed to serve transportation rather than land. These motorways should be developed on a right-of-way, about 360 feet in width, no crossing at grade at any point--all cross streets should pass over or under. Upon the central portion of the right-of-way, a four- to six-lane pavement should be provided, with a planning strip separating opposing traffic lanes. The slopes on either side should be planted. In the event motor buses or trolleybuses prove to be inadequate for the transportation requirements of the future metropolitan district, an excellent right-of-way will have been provided for a rail rapid transportation system." This most daring futurist proposal became the subject of many newspaper artists' pictures of the future. "Passing through built-up business districts, these facilities could be straight into and through specially designed motorway buildings located in the centers of the blocks, with connecting bridges over the cross streets. In these buildings, as many floors as necessary would be developed to parking." Although part of the dream never became reality, the development of East's motorways exceeded his expectations, with one exception: excess condemnation of land for the inclusion of the center planning strip for future mass public transportation was provided only in rural, suburban stretches, where it may never be used for that purpose. In 1941, the Arroyo Seco Freeway connecting Pasadena with L.A.'s central business district was completed as a four-lane highway passing through Elysian Park in a single tunnel system. The first such experiment in the country, its short on-ramps, with stop signs at the freeway intersection entrances, are extremely substandard and hazardous today. The Cahuenga Pass freeway connecting Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley was built as the Hollywood Freeway from the west bypass to the Hollywood Bowl, as planned. In 1945 the city planning department revised their 1934 master plan of highways, added one for the San Fernando Valley in 1946, and both were adopted in 1948. Meantime, the transportation engineering board, the state division of highways, and others were working on plans. In 1947 the state division brought before the planning commission for comment and approval a plan for 165 miles of freeway to be built in ten years for an estimated $300 million, to be expanded to an ultimate 613 miles. The plan was similar in alignment to parkway plans proposed by the Robinson plan and the Olmsted [Brothers] plan proposed in the second decade of the century. The term parkway correctly refers to a linear park containing a limited- access and scenic drive, similar to those developed in New York State by Robert Moses. The term has romantic appeal and was used in most concept plans until the early fifties. When "freeway" was substituted--derived from its freedom from grade-level intersections, not because it didn't cost much. The unparalleled boldness and grace of the freeway- system is a marvel of construction which has reshaped the city and added new dimensions, stimulating new centers, tying them together, and shrinking the time-distance factor in civic life. Another subject that was tackled by both the Preface and by the planning department was subdivisions, which was lucky, because at the end of the war they [subdivisions] came in by droves. And as a result of state law changes or adoptions and city planning-- First of all, with the California State Map Filing Act and then the city planning department proposals, we had something to hang our hat on for handling the subdivisions that came in. Fifty thousand or more new lots were recorded from 1943 to 1949.

LASKEY

Fifty thousand?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and every one had to come before the planning commission itself after being studied by the [appropriate] section of the department and approved or disapproved or conditions required. The community development plan for 3,023 acres approved by the planning commission and the council was a grand subdivision of land to be called Westchester near the newly conceived Los Angeles municipal airport, another planning project, that was referred to in a flier the airport commission [Los Angeles City Board of Airport Commissioners] put out called "Los Angeles: Tank Town or Terminus?"

LASKEY

Who put that out?

ALEXANDER

The airport commission, which was headed by Bob [Robert L,] Smith, who was publisher of the [Los Angeles] Daily News--which was a really good paper in my view. It [Westchester] was planned by Don Ayers in close collaboration with the planning department, in collaboration with the department to contain all the amenities considered desirable for community life, such as land for parks, playgrounds, elementary, junior high, and high schools, a balanced amount of commercial land, and three times the area of retail commercial space in automobile parking areas adjacent to and behind shopping buildings. Several builders, such as Marlow-Burns, participated in development and construction of the community.

1.10. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 3, 1986

ALEXANDER

One of the features of the plan was the requirement by the planning department that the land developers dedicate land for major limited-access highways, which necessarily paralleled interior service streets, a duplication which enhanced the value of the development. The developers sued and forced the city to pay for the limited-access highways, which served the city at large but also provided access to the city for the community and protected the community from through traffic. The suit was carried all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the planning commission's requirement was sustained in a landmark decision. The wisdom of public officials, however, cannot be legislated. The wisest laws sometimes protect us from the lack of foresight of even the best intentioned of public servants. When planning department employees accompanied the developer of Westchester to urge the [Los Angeles Unified School District] Board of Education to buy the school sites shown on the plan at raw land costs, Dr. Evans, the school planner, referred to his little black book and said, "There are 353 people living in that area now, and when there are children, we'll pick them up in buses." Within a decade, the population of Westchester was more than 30,000, living in 11,000 homes. And the board of education was purchasing entire blocks of recently built homes to acquire school sites. (I was on the commission at that time, and we were approving school sites on blocks of houses. ) In a similar way, the city recreation and parks commission [Los Angeles City Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners] was offered free sites, shown on the plan for parks and playgrounds, providing the commission would sign contracts agreeing to develop the sites as soon as they were surrounded by houses. This offer was turned down because no funds had been budgeted for the purpose. Many complaints have been made regarding the venality of city bosses such as Krump of Memphis. But it is said that at least the public got ten cents [worth] of parks for every dollar he diverted to his own use. The public may be served worse by the stupidity of well-intentioned guardians of the public trust. And the beaches. My god, the beaches. Before the war, the beaches had been condemned because of the sewage. The Santa Monica Bay beaches, you couldn't go swimming in them. They were condemned by the state and signs were posted. And you didn't need the signs for the most part. You'd find-- Well, what's his name? The famous German author?

LASKEY

Thomas Mann?

ALEXANDER

Thomas Mann describes walking on the beach with friends, and he couldn't understand these thousands of white worms or something. And then he finally found out they were condoms on the beach.

LASKEY

At Santa Monica?

ALEXANDER

This is the Santa Monica Bay beach, all through Los Angeles. And this was all from the Hyperion sewage plant [Hyperion Treatment Plant], which didn't even strain the darned sewage--it just went into the ocean, just awful . P. G. Winnett, president of Bullock's Department Stores, in pondering the need to bring merchandising to the people in a multifaceted metropolis, became interested in public planning. A man of public spirit and action, he organized in 1943 the Greater Los Angeles Citizens Committee, which funded a staff that produced studies on airports, auditorium sites, transportation, beaches, redevelopment and industry, [studies] cutting across political jurisdictions. Their plan of Santa Monica Bay beaches, extending from Topanga Canyon to El Segundo, including the Marina del Rey small-craft harbor which had been proposed by the county regional planning commission in 1923, became the foundation for the Los Angeles Planning Department beach plan, completed in 1944 and adopted in 1945. Two years later the state appropriated $10 million for county beach acquisition, of which Los Angeles County received more than $4 million, which had to be matched in dollar and land value. Within the city limits, the city and county transferred 3 2/3 miles to the state. The state purchased 2 1/4 miles and then leased all state-owned beach frontage back to the city and county for development and administration in contracts that expire at the turn of the century. I had quite a thrill signing that agreement for the city.

LASKEY

I bet you did.

ALEXANDER

To see that it was the year 2000.

LASKEY

We're protected.

ALEXANDER

We're almost there. Thus the first major recreation project planned by the city appeared ready for a unified and coordinated public use. But the next subject is sewage.

LASKEY

I was going to say, what happened to our beaches? How did you get those cleared up?

ALEXANDER

Before it could be used, however, a huge project delayed by the war had to be tackled and completed. Should I read this stuff or just kind of summarize it? Eventually you can see this, but--

LASKEY

What did happen? Because there was a major battle waged over the placement of the Hyperion Treatment Plant.

ALEXANDER

That's correct, yeah.

LASKEY

Which was very important.

ALEXANDER

Well, the--

LASKEY

Were you involved in this? Were you on the city planning commission when this was going on?

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, sure.

LASKEY

So what do you remember?

ALEXANDER

Well, I'll tell you how bad it was. Before the war only 55 percent of the sewage was screened, and not well at that. The discharge of sewage in Hyperion fouled the coast. Permit for operation of this plant was officially revoked September 3, 1940. The city was given one year in which to make specific improvements. And of course the war came along, and by 1945 the problem had not been cured, and an increase in 20 percent of the population did not improve the situation.

LASKEY

I was just about to say, now in 1945 what was the population of Los Angeles? We were well over a million at that point, I believe. And all the sewage from--

ALEXANDER

In 1945 the population of Los Angeles was over two million.

LASKEY

It was just being flushed into the Pacific Ocean.

ALEXANDER

Right. Well, I remember I lived in Baldwin Hills, and we frequently went down to where the marina is now. We'd walk on the beach, and it was sticky with sewage on our bare feet. And I remember the sea gulls by the droves would be feeding on the sewage.

LASKEY

Well, the smell must have been--

ALEXANDER

Oh, it was terrible. Well, the [Los Angeles City] Department of Public Works wanted to simply expand the plant at Hyperion, and the planning department was opposed to that, one of the reasons being that we assumed if they simply expanded the plant, the action would make it impossible to use the tons of sand in the sand dunes at that location. And sand is a vanishing resource, because dams, both for flood control and for water resource, have prevented the flow of new sand out of the rivers and into the ocean along the shore. There is constantly a littoral drift of sand to the south; sand is always moving along the coast of California to the south. And people don't realize what's going on because there's always some more sand coming from up north, where there are still some wild rivers. But the sand that was originally formed and eventually formed these great sand dunes was being occupied by houses at-- Was it Camino? Where the marina is, whatever they call it now.

LASKEY

Marina del Rey.

ALEXANDER

The sewage treatment plant, the original one, had been built on the top of these sand dunes. So we just imagined that they would go ahead and expand the plant and would cut off the possibility of using this sand to expand the beaches. So we were adamantly opposed. There were a lot of other reasons. And finally the mayor called a joint meeting in his office of the planning commission and the [Los Angeles City] Board of Public Works, where he had a lot of discussion about what was going to happen as to location. (We were favoring a site at Venice.) And one of the items was the sand resource at the present location of the Hyperion plant. Another question was what do you do if you do put in a decent plant and you have all of this sludge: "What are you going to do with it? Are you going to sell it?" "Oh, no, we're going to purify it. We're going to purify everything and then flush it in the ocean." Well, this raised hackles on the back of my head, and it would have made authors of the Preface to a Master Plan revolve in their graves. Because the most precious resource of Southern California is water, and the second most is the soil for agriculture. And here we're purifying the water and then dumping it in the ocean; we're purifying the sludge and then flushing that into the ocean.

LASKEY

Which could have been used as fertilizer.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, that was the theory anyway. So I raised the question about the sludge, and they said, "Well, you see, we figured it out, and it costs five cents a bag to do that. I mean, we'd lose five cents a bag." Well, that's because the accountants in their department are in charge and there's no department that says, "Look, that's valuable stuff. It's valuable to the state, it's valuable to the city." Anyway, they weren't going to do it because they'd lose five cents a bag. And when it came to water conservation, oh, that was horrendous. They wouldn't conceive of reusing water.

LASKEY

This is the board of public works?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. "Well, the public's not ready for it yet. And besides, it's going to cost more because you have to pump it uphill." I said, "Now, wait a minute. How about putting in sewage treatment plants starting in the [San Fernando] Valley and various places downhill from there and then reusing it in agriculture only or in industry?" "Oh, they wouldn't stand for it," Well, this was the same time the board of public works was asking for $10 million to sewer the Valley. Well, you win some and you lose some.

LASKEY

So they got their Hyperion plant.

ALEXANDER

They got their Hyperion plant. Actually, though, there is some good news there. Let's see. The board of public works had their way in using the Hyperion site and managed to design and construct that in such a way that by 1948, 14 million cubic yards of sand had been transferred hydraulically from the sewage treatment plant site to widen the area of six miles of beach from 75 feet to 600-650 feet in depth.

LASKEY

So they did manage to find a way to at least use the sand?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. The beach quarantine was lifted in 1950. Since the late forties some treated water has been used to inject into wells along the shoreline in an attempt to prevent the intrusion of salt water, which was seeping inland due to the overpumping of fresh water from wells in the coastal plain. And the county has an experimental sewage treatment and reuse project. Many provisions have been made to enhance percolation in dry riverbeds to recharge the natural underground-water reservoir.

LASKEY

Of course, I don't know whether you have seen the papers or not, but Santa Monica Bay has once more become polluted.

ALEXANDER

No, I didn't know that.

LASKEY

It's a major problem that Santa Monica is dealing with right now.

ALEXANDER

Well, after-- This is a personal note. After a joint meeting in his honor's office-- I think I have it right here. I'll get it for you. [tape recorder off] Well, I had only had a couple of private sessions with Mayor Bowron and didn't know him very well. I wanted to test his humor because he was rather an austere-looking individual. [He was] plump. He could have looked jolly, but he always looked stern. So I sent him this copy of Gems of American Architecture by Greer, which is a compendium of outhouses, including such items as a two- story privy with staggered seats, which was inappropriate for Los Angeles, I avowed. And I asked him to look through and see which one he would support. He didn't go for the "sportsman," which had a pair of wagon wheels on it so that you could wheel it to a new location in a hurry. But he finally picked what was called the "Venetian," referring of course to our preference for a sewage treatment plant in Venice. This one was built to overhang a stream. And his response in his letter was a delightful and humorous response.

LASKEY

Where did you find this?

ALEXANDER

I don't know. It was given to me one time, evidently in the thirties, and I just happened to have it.

LASKEY

So he responded accordingly.

ALEXANDER

Well, the whole story of handling the sewage problem in the county of Los Angeles -- Naturally people want to handle sewage by gravity wherever possible. It's the cheapest way. And in order to do that, you cut through all types of administrative lines. Gravity doesn't have any respect for city boundaries. So it's been a complex and wonderful development, the cooperation. Wherever irrigation or water and gravity are of some importance people start to cooperate. In any other field it would be called communism. But in the case of water going downhill, everybody recognizes that it's a god-given right.

LASKEY

Especially in Los Angeles.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. According to a Mr. [Raymond] Goudey, who wrote the Preface chapter on sewage, "In 1940 there were over two thousand miles of sewers in the Los Angeles area, having a total discharge of 205 million gallons per day, and twelve independent sewer systems in the metropolitan area, which serviced 2.5 million people, or about 90 percent of the population. The explosive development of the San Fernando Valley in widely scattered subdivisions posed a major health problem." The Valley, at first, when it was first developed for farming dry agriculture, depended on mining the lens of pure, fresh water underlying the valley. And when shallow wells were first punctured into this reservoir, artesian water spouted eighteen feet in the air.

LASKEY

In the Valley?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, it was just marvelous. Of course they thought, "This is here--it's going to be forever." Well, of course, in no time flat the wells had to be drilled three hundred feet deep and they had to use pumps to pump the water out, so that that natural resource was soon depleted. And then the Owens Valley water came in. And it only came to the northwest end of the Valley. The Valley was not in Los Angeles city limits, [but] the water was paid for by the people of Los Angeles and, by god, they were going to have it come to Los Angeles. So it had been foreseen by some smart individuals that it would be a wise move to buy up Valley land, which was purchased at around $2 to $2.50 an acre. And the city not only needed the water to use themselves, but they needed heavy consumers of water. Because they paid all this money and they had to pay off the bonds, and they needed heavy water consumer customers. The natural thing was for farmers who had the wherewithal to farm on a big scale and use a lot of that Owens Valley water--and they had more water than they could use at the beginning. So the Valley, of course, was developed without sewers and with septic tanks right and left. That was okay when it was a farm community, but as the population started to fill the Valley, the water built up underground at the lower end of the Valley. It kept seeping downhill. At the east end of the Valley there turned out to be a dike of impervious rock below ground that you couldn't see. So that backed up the water as if it were an above-ground dam. The water that went through the people of the Valley and through their cesspools and septic tanks filtered through the Valley gravel to this dam, where Griffith Park is. And then eventually it came up to the surface. And the people right near Griffith Park who had septic tanks found that the tanks were floating in sewage and their septic tanks wouldn't work. Because the water table, instead of being fifty feet deep, was two feet deep. Or there was even sewage running in the streets. This was the situation when I came on the commission in 1945. Nothing could be done about it in 1945, but we had to plan on something. One part of the plan was when we came to a new zoning law, after a conference with people in the Valley, we found that it would be popular and it would be a useful thing to have an area called R-A, or residential-agricultural, halfway between [residential and] agricultural use. It would really be a suburban use of a half acre, and that would be big enough, we figured, to have a leach field to serve one residence on that twenty thousand square feet .

LASKEY

A leach field. What is that?

ALEXANDER

Well, that's the same as a private sewage treatment plant. You run the effluent from your septic tank through several yards of sand or gravel, and it purifies it. Anyway, that was one of the attempts, but ultimately, it came to the bond issue that Bowron put on at the end of the war, which included about $10 million for sewering the Valley completely.

LASKEY

So it wasn't until this time that the Valley got sewers.

ALEXANDER

That's right. There were no sewers there at all. Well, hardly any. I think there was one that went out to Van Nuys. To relieve the pressure on this water building up behind this impervious dike, the city drilled wells in the dry bed of the Los Angeles River, and they found, to their amazement I think, that the water that had been through one use and had taken as much as three years to filter down was pure as the driven snow. So they were able to pipe it directly into the water system without running it through a sewage treatment plant or anything like that. It had its own sewage treatment plant in the Valley itself. So I think 17 percent of our water supply at that time, after these wells were drilled, came from the reuse of water that people didn't know was being reused.

LASKEY

That's interesting. From the Los Angeles River? So that was joined with the water from the Owens Valley.

ALEXANDER

It was water from the Owens Valley, originally.

LASKEY

It was water from the Owens Valley?

ALEXANDER

Sure, but it was being reused. It's still going on, but people don't recognize it that way. They still have this pumping field right at the foot of the new and more beautiful Forest Lawn. [laughter] And this bond issue provided for completely sewering the Valley. In the long run there is no question, in my mind now, that it was the thing that should have been done. But I still think that the intermediate sewage treatment plants at various stages of elevation above the ocean would have been a good idea. Anyway, at the same time, a group from the planning staff was working on a recreation plan. The bond issue provided funds for buildings and equipment, for police administration, health centers, and fire department, and $12 million for public recreation. That gave the parks and recreation department [Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks] a good start in carrying out a really magnificent plan that the planning department worked out, starting in 1942 with a survey and helped by the Greater Los Angeles Citizens Committee in 1943. And the planning staff started to work in earnest in 1945 and adopted minimum standards and then--

LASKEY

This is for the city parks?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, this was for parks and playgrounds. And the plan, that I thought was terrific, is still being used for locating parks and playgrounds. It provided for little local communities and for areas that you might call regional within the city and for citywide as a whole. It had these various levels, and it had excellent standards for sports centers, district playgrounds, and neighborhood parks and playgrounds. And it is still being used for locating new ones where they're needed and when they have the funds. By 1945, just two years after the bond issue, twenty-nine new playground sites had been acquired, fourteen were being developed, two public golf courses were completed, three beaches were widened, and new recreation buildings, swimming pools, tennis courts, and baseball diamonds had been completed. Hansen Dam and the Sepulveda flood control and recreation area had been developed, all with the bond issue made possible [by] the planning that went before it.

LASKEY

And you were involved in developing this plan.

ALEXANDER

Don't forget, I'm talking about the planning department [not the commission]. It really gets the credit for things like this. But this was a very exciting time for the planning commission to be in office and to at least see these things and encourage these things to go on.

LASKEY

How closely did the planning commission work with the planning department?

ALEXANDER

Well, officially, we sat down twice a week: once a week was devoted to public hearings and the other weekly meeting was devoted to planning matters. Eventually, we managed to pass off some of the work. For instance, in the conducting of public meetings, we had a change in the law adopted to make it possible for a deputy of the commission to conduct the hearing and let us know what the results were. The idea was to give us time to breathe and take a look at some of the policies that were necessary and desirable to discuss and develop. But informally, such a commissioner as Schuchardt would spend quite a bit of time messing around, seeing what the employees were doing. I did some of that, but I was trying to found a practice at the same time, so I didn't have the same amount of time.

LASKEY

You worked closely with Schuchardt, didn't you? You were personal friends as well as members on the board.

ALEXANDER

Yes. Charlie [Charles B.] Bennett used to say-- When I would have some wild, glorious planning dream to talk about, he'd say, "You know, we have to get the streets cleaned first. First things first." Well, waste elimination was another thing that was in the Preface to a Master Plan. And to quote: "The Los Angeles metropolitan area"--this was in 1940--"is hardly removed from the Dark Ages in the matter of a coordinated system of waste elimination. In the problem of garbage or refuse collection or disposal, there is no uniform plan. Combined facilities of the metropolitan area should be pooled for collection and disposal of sewage, garbage, refuse, dead bodies, and junk." He pointed out that "disposal of garbage is made directly to twenty-five privately owned hog ranches, which receive a thousand tons of wet garbage a day." This was in 1940. "Over 230 dead animals are removed every day from the city streets. Planning is essential to provide a program which would lead to benefits from reclaimed water or fertilizer."

LASKEY

There was no system for that?

ALEXANDER

No, this was during the war. People don't recall-- Well, let's get on with it. There were no garbage disposals, nothing under your sink that would chew up garbage and send it to the-- That's one of the problems that they have in running a sewage treatment plant today. Everybody has a garbage disposal, so they get all the garbage that used to go to the hogs. It was recycled when it went to the hogs; at least you got some good meat out of it. But now it's chewed up and goes to the disposal, where it clogs the sewage plant. And at that time we had wet garbage and dry garbage. The dry garbage we were supposed to burn ourselves in our backyard incinerator.

LASKEY

That's right.

ALEXANDER

During the war and before that. And the wet garbage went to the hogs.

LASKEY

How did it get picked up?

ALEXANDER

Well, it got picked up by--

LASKEY

Private--

ALEXANDER

Yeah, private companies that had--they were managed like public utilities, I guess--contracts with the city. Now, here [in Berkeley] they pay a monthly charge for a garbage can. My recollection in Los Angeles was that we didn't have a bill for garbage. It was not on our tax bill or anything like that--except hidden. (The city paid for it. ) Well, smog, first noticed in the early war years, caused every potential source to be blamed by those responsible for other potential sources. And, of course, the obvious smoke from incomplete combustion in thousands of incinerators was the first source identified as the cause. The planning department was given the unenviable task of holding public hearings on a citywide plan locating enormous public incinerators, which were said to be so designed that they would consume wet garbage and dry trash-- except for metal, glass, and ceramics--so completely that they would produce virtually no smoke. The citizens at public hearings on the subject expressed their disbelief readily, [laughter] which put incinerators on a class of popularity equal to cemeteries and slaughterhouses. Finally the great day dawned when the Lacy Street incinerator, the first of a proposed series, was ready to be loaded. Private trash collectors, in a line as far as the eye could see, were also ready, loaded with miscellaneous sofas, bed springs, and other indigestibles mixed with the garbage, so that the incinerator soon belched, choked, and expired, putting an end to the dream of central incinerators. Tons of firebrick used in construction of the Lacy Street fiasco lie at the foot of Mount Washington--where I used to live. And then smog. Well, I remember when I first noticed it. I used to take the Pacific Electric red car from Pasadena, the Oak Knoll line to Sixth [Street] and Main [Street], and then walk from there over to the Doheny Building at Tenth [Street] and Figueroa [Street], and just before the war started, when I was on this routine, I noticed smog for the first time in just walking along and suddenly getting all the fumes, especially the truck fumes. But I remember as president of the planning commission, I was invited to a breakfast meeting down at San Pedro harbor called by the Western Oil and Gas Association to discuss the smog problem. And after lengthy discussions and finger-pointing and so forth on the part of those present, I asked, "Well, since it's admitted that part of the problem, at least, comes from these refineries down here, when are you going to do something about it?" And the president of the Western Oil and Gas Association said, "We'll clean it up as soon as we can find a profitable means of doing so." [laughter] So that was that. Anyway, we were concerned about it at the time, but didn't do anything to stop it.

LASKEY

What did you feel at the time you could have done to have stopped it? Had you had total power, were you an emperor-- Would the banning of automobiles have substantially stopped--?

ALEXANDER

Banning automobiles? [laughter] I don't think that would have been enough by any means. I think there is still a great deal of industrial abuse that goes on without having any attention paid to it. But there is no doubt that automobiles put a lot of it into the atmosphere.

LASKEY

Can it be stopped as long as there are six, eight, ten million people living in an enclosed basin?

ALEXANDER

I think so, yeah. I think wherever regulations impinge on industry in any way, whether it's the automobile industry or electric generating plants or whatever, there are squawks and they are paid attention to, and there is not strict enough enforcement. And if Los Angeles gets stricter enforcement, then the federal government says we take priority or something like that. It's a hard thing to do, but it can be done, I believe. Well, there was a really monumental achievement of the planning department in the preparation of a totally revised comprehensive zoning ordinance for the entire city of Los Angeles, adopted by the city planning commission on July 31, 1945, The staff and commission, with consultants Gordon Whitnall and Earl 0. Mills of Saint Louis, worked intensively for more than two years to produce an innovative zoning law and a map applying it to 454 square miles, the largest zoned area of any city in the country. It helped influence the shape of the city. It replaced nine separate ordinances directly affecting zoning administration, plus other regulations which governed directly. Almost half the area of the city had been zoned only by excluding nonresidential uses, and the rest was covered by two primitive sets of regulations. Before the new plan was adopted, the areas of the city where residential uses were permitted had a legally permitted capacity of 14 million people. To avoid a confrontation with property owners who thought mistakenly that commercial and multiple-housing designations guaranteed such uses and consequent riches, few adjustments in permitted use were made in the older parts of the city. Such a head-on proposal as that of a rational zoning plan would have stopped the ordinance cold. As director Charlie Bennett and principal planner Milt Breivogel said after the adoption of the new ordinance, "There will still remain a considerable surplus of business in apartment house zoning. It is hoped that after several more years of stewing in the juice of frustration, property owners will see the wisdom of adjusting the zoning pattern to more closely conform to the law of supply and demand." It's clear that they too were frustrated by the intransigence of landowners whose dreams of riches could never be fulfilled. Now, just among other things, this zoning ordinance--I think for the first time in the country--required automobile parking off street in a garage in an R-1 zone. One for every house, and a certain number for apartment houses. It had to be off-street parking. You can just take a look around Berkeley today, which was largely built up before the automobile became popular. But even today they don't have a law like that.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

People that are not stupid usually build a garage when they are building a new house. There are very few new houses around here. That was just one thing that was a breakthrough in a zoning ordinance.

LASKEY

You also zoned the Valley in that ordinance. That must have been a major undertaking.

ALEXANDER

Yes indeed. I have a separate section on the Valley that we can talk about. To give additional meaning to the scope of the ordinance, a staff analysis showed that 6 million people could be accommodated in the areas proposed to be zoned for residential use, and that on the basis of 30 lineal feet per 100 population, this 643 miles of property zoned for commercial use would serve a population of 11 million. Well, that's about the proportion. As late as April 1947, there were 125,000 vacant subdivided lots within the city, 16,000 of which were within a closed-in area bounded by Highland [Avenue], Glendale [Boulevard], Pico [Boulevard] and Franklin Avenue.

1.11. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 3, 1986

ALEXANDER

Well, we were on zoning. Of course, for one thing, zoning perpetuated the small farmlet shape of housing in Los Angeles, which was a midwestern concept. Note that the principal planners came from the Midwest, and the majority of settlers that came in the vast surge after World War I were from the Midwest, retired farmers. They thought of a town house as being a small farm, and the front yard was a necessity, as far as they were concerned. Just the opposite of what I would have expected had the Spanish and Mexicans been in charge, where it would be typical for them to build to the property line, to the street line, and have an interior court that was their living environment. Instead, you sat on the front porch and talked to the neighbors and mowed your lawn while they mowed theirs and so forth. It's not that it's any better or worse than other ways, but I find a great contrast between the Los Angeles situation, that has been frozen into their zoning, contrasted with the San Francisco picture, which came from an urbanization that was frozen before the automobile became popular. And where in the city it was originally expected and planned to have a shop owner live over his shop, and where there is life in the city twenty-four hours a day--in contrast to downtown Los Angeles, where you can shoot a cannon down the street and not hit anybody after seven o'clock. And where it's quite reasonable to expect a two-storied development, at least two stories, sometimes higher, in a city that is bounded by water on three sides, as in the case of Manhattan or other restricted places, where you can see the terminus of the city, the end of the land, compared to Los Angeles, where there was no end. But I was in favor of making it possible for some areas, if they chose, to be developed along the Mediterranean lines. I would enjoy seeing that kind of variety being made possible if people chose it. But that was not to be. I mean to say I couldn't argue my way through that one.

LASKEY

It really is in the city ordinance of Los Angeles, then, that there have to be lawns, that it has to be set back--

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, there have to be side yards and rear yards and front yards of a defined size. I would like to see the possibility of having an entire area of the city, at some time, take on a different form, but that is just a personal preference for diversity.

LASKEY

Now, this was, as you pointed out, a product partly of having planners who came from the Midwest, who were instituting the farmhouse kind of an ideal. How did the developers feel about that? Because they're very powerful here in Los Angeles.

ALEXANDER

Well, of course, they're in favor of anything that will sell, and people are used to what they see there. In fact the developers revel in it. I debated public housing with Fritz Burns before the Town Hall [of California] audience on one occasion. And he vowed that he never heard such music in his ears as the lawn mower every Sunday morning in his subdivisions.

LASKEY

He was perpetuating the American myth.

ALEXANDER

Well, it's also of some interest, historically, in that the first residential lots prescribed by Governor de Neve--Felipe de Neve, the first governor of North California, Alta California--in his plan for a Los Angeles were just about the same size as the typical 6,000-square- foot lot in Los Angeles that is prescribed by law to be not less than 5,000. Five thousand is the minimum, and most lots in subdivisions are around six thousand. And that was just about the size of de Neve's lots that he planned to surround the plaza. So the size has a long and honorable history. Another thing that has gone by the boards that I regret: In the early days you'll see in pictures of downtown Los Angeles, the commercial areas, [that] the sidewalks were covered, as they were in many pioneer towns. [Now they are] sometimes covered with snow, inclement weather, or whatnot, but no one is permitted to build over the sidewalks now. In San Francisco it's legal to have a bay window project beyond what is obviously the property line. It doesn't hurt anybody, and it's a pretty good feature. In the case of the Los Angeles law, there is an exception made for a movie marquee. The movie industry had enough clout to permit a movie marquee to go beyond the lot line, but every marquee has to be approved by the fine arts commission.

LASKEY

I knew that all pieces of public art did, but I didn't realize that movie marquees were included.

ALEXANDER

Anything that projects beyond the property line has to be approved by the city art commission.

LASKEY

Well, it's just another indication of what you were saying about the Spanish-Mediterranean history of Los Angeles being obliterated by Midwesterners. Because the colonnades and covered walks are a part of Mediterranean life-style still.

ALEXANDER

Like the old [Governor Pio] Pico House. It has a covered arcade all the way around it, and you'll see some fairly good examples of that coming back that I applaud. They're all within the private property line, I should say, such as the building on Sixth [Street] that Bill [William] Pereira designed. Not the new Crocker building--

LASKEY

Oh, the Ahmanson Center, perhaps, on Wilshire [Boulevard] .

ALEXANDER

No, I'm thinking about downtown on Sixth Street. It is a building that has an arcade walk that's within the property line, but it does make an arcade that-- Do you have it there?

LASKEY

I think so. Oh, the Security Pacific Building that is downtown. I think it's on Sixth. There are two Security Pacific buildings downtown. There's the A. [Albert] C. Martin [Jr.]--

ALEXANDER

I know that one. That's on Bunker Hill. How about Crocker?

LASKEY

I don't see it. There is no Crocker here.

ALEXANDER

There's a brand-new Crocker Building on Bunker Hill, but there's one where O'Melveny and Meyers have their offices.

LASKEY

Yeah, the Crocker Building. It's a tall building. They're all tall buildings, [but] it's particularly tall, steel framed. It's just not listed here. But it is the Crocker Building, the Crocker Bank Building.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, that's it. I don't know whether they call it the Crocker Bank Building now.

LASKEY

I don't think so. I think it's under new ownership now.

ALEXANDER

There's a new Crocker Building on Bunker Hill. I wonder if O'Melveny and Meyers didn't buy the whole building.

LASKEY

Well, I think so, because it hasn't been the Crocker Center for a while. Yeah, the Crocker Center is the new one that Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill have done down on Bunker Hill. The old one that Pereira did hasn't been Crocker for a while.

ALEXANDER

Okay. Well, it's possible to recapture some of that, but I think it would be great to be able to walk around the city under some kind of shelter like that, much as you do in Bern, Switzerland. Have you been there?

LASKEY

No, unfortunately.

ALEXANDER

Arcades all over the place covering the public walks.

LASKEY

What's sort of fascinating is that we don't have arcades or public walks in Los Angeles, that all of our shopping centers are inside, covered malls, which doesn't make any sense relative to the climate.

ALEXANDER

Right.

LASKEY

Nor are there many outdoor restaurants.

ALEXANDER

Uh-uh. Well, of course, the skyline came along in 1956, requiring a charter amendment. Up until that time-- In fact, when I first arrived at Los Angeles, the city hall was new. And the city library [Los Angeles City Central Library] was what? Five years old. It was finished in '25. And they were the most prominent-- Those two things and Pershing Square were the three things people remembered about Los Angeles downtown. Kevin Lynch made a survey of what people could recall of downtown Los Angeles. They identified those three points as the three salient memorable objects in downtown Los Angeles.

LASKEY

That's interesting.

ALEXANDER

Of course, the 1956 change in building-height limit from thirteen stories, or 150 feet, to the equivalent of thirteen stories times the area of the property being the maximum in any form-- It could be half the area of the property and twice thirteen stories high in the most dense area. So that the intensity of use was not increased, but the flexibility of height was changed. And it may be to someone's sorrow one of these days when they have a really big earthquake, which I don't think will knock buildings down, but on the upper floors of tall buildings it's apt to make people projectiles and their furniture lethal and throw people out of windows and so forth. It may not actually knock buildings down, but it's hazardous, really, to go as tall as they're going in an earthquake-prone area.

LASKEY

Well, even the mild quakes that we've had tend to have the upper stories swaying pretty far, even as it is.

ALEXANDER

I wish I had the quotation right now--I've been looking for it. I wish I had [G.] Gordon Whitnall's quotation from something he wrote many years ago now, foreseeing the future of Los Angeles. He forecast what it's becoming, which is a multiple-centered city, which was made obvious by this change in the building height. Up to that time, there wasn't very much difference between thirteen stories and a six-story area, and that sort of thing. But with the liberation of the height limits, you can see clearly that it's a multiple-centered city. It still has a major downtown, which I think it should and is necessary, but it's a unique city in that respect.

LASKEY

Well, if you ever go up to the planetarium [Griffith Park Observatory] on a clear day and look out over the city, you can see that.

ALEXANDER

Oh, this is the Gordon Whitnall — There's a quotation from Gordon Whitnall in 1923: "This great metropolitan district shall be not one great whole, but the coordination of many units, within each of which there shall be the most ideal living conditions," and so forth. "That, to me, seems the great ideal American city, a community of the future--the recognition of a small unit and its perpetuation." Gordon Whitnall, 1923.

LASKEY

That was before Los Angeles had really started to expand. I don't think Bullock's Wilshire had even been built then.

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

That was built a couple of years in the future, and that's considered the first major monument to the decentralization of the city. So that was rather farsighted. It was very farsighted. Did you know Whitnall?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

Did you work with him?

ALEXANDER

Well, I never did any work with him, but yeah, I knew him. [I] saw a good deal of him after he retired. We were both members of Lambda Alpha, which is an organization of people interested in land planning and land economics and land generally. He was a regular attendee. He was eloquent, as most Welshmen seem to be, and sometimes too verbose to suit me, but he was certainly a force in planning in Southern California. Then conditional uses and special conditions were addressed by the ordinance for the first time. The ordinance was approved at that time. That made it necessary for Forest Lawn [Mortuaries] , for instance, to ask for conditional use. Conditional use may be permitted in any zone whatsoever. For instance, it's reasonable to permit a church to exist in a residential area and not be confined to a commercial or an industrial area. But it's also recognized by the conditional-use technique that its use ought to be controlled somewhat. For instance, it should have parking for its meetings; it should have perhaps, visually, some surrounding hedges around the parking lot; it should confine its meetings to certain preordained hours when the neighbors know it's going to be noisy, when they're going to sing their heads off at a certain time on a Sunday morning, that sort of thing. So that is permitted in any zone, but only with certain conditions that may vary from place to place. You can't always predict what the conditions are going to be. It depends on the situation. And that applied, among other things, to cemeteries, which before that time had sort of special cemetery districts, which didn't make any sense at all, because it just applied to that parcel the size of a postage stamp, or whatever it was. It could be a little one or it could be a great big one. You mentioned the San Fernando Valley. The [Los Angeles City] Department [of Planning] worked out what I thought was a magnificent planning proposal for the development of the Valley, which had hardly been developed at all in 1940, '45. However, the plan depended for implementation on the permanence of a zoning pattern, and I found that that's nothing to rely on at all. That is, for the first time in anybody's zoning law, we had, as I mentioned, the suburban zone of a half acre per lot, as well as the R-1, and in addition to that, agricultural zones of two orders: one a two-acre and one a five-acre piece. And at the time this was planned, there were 212 square miles in the Valley. Sixteen small centers of population had developed, widely separated by agricultural land. Well, this plan proposed to increase the size of each of these sixteen small centers, to surround the commercial, industrial, and residential land--multiple- residential and single-family-residence areas--with suburban lots. And those in turn [were to be] surrounded by two-acre agricultural lots, and those surrounded by a five-acre maximum. This doesn't mean that every ownership in the five-acre area would be five acres. That would be the minimum subdivision and suitable to an intensive agricultural area. This, in effect, was expected to produce greenbelts around these sixteen communities. And, as it was laid out, the area of the city within the Valley was large enough to contain the entire city of Chicago. It was anticipated that the Valley, as formed by the zoning that I just mentioned with the sixteen centers surrounded by agricultural greenbelts, would accommodate 900,000 people. It was not expected to reach that population until the year 2000. But nevertheless, it would have contained 900,000 people if developed according to the original zoning plan. And, as it was originally contemplated, if the zoning had been intensified in those sixteen centers outward, it could contain the present population and still have greenbelts. But the greed of the developer immediately after World War II, as well as the frantic demand for housing, made Congress, the city council, and everybody else bow down to the developers: "Please get us housing." They frustrated the plan and wrecked it completely in no time flat. The Japanese surrender came only one month and two days after the [Los Angeles City] Planning Commission adopted the comprehensive zoning ordinance. The population of the city had increased 20 percent, adding about 300,000 in the previous five years. The white population had increased only 17.7 percent, while blacks had increased 108.7 percent and others, mainly Mexican-Americans, increased 49.9 percent. Few residential units had been built during the war, and the pent-up demand [was] estimated in 1947 to be an immediate need of 123,159 dwellings, or 150,847 through 1948. In response, 804 subdivisions, creating almost 40,000 new lots in the Valley, were approved in the four years from 1945 to '49. More than 98,000 new dwelling units were built in the city during the same period, most of them in the San Fernando Valley, where the speculators had a field day. With the vast pent-up demand and a sure market, it would have been quite profitable for developers to buy undeveloped lots in any of the existing town centers or even to acquire adjacent unsubdivided land, applying for changes in zone from R-A [residential-agricultural] to suburban R-1. But nothing would satisfy their greed. Instead, they obtained options for practically nothing to buy the cheapest land zoned for agricultural use, and applied for changes in zone to R-1. Sometimes, accompanied by a veteran with an American Legion hat, they found willing cooperators in the planning director and four of the commissioners, who needed no urging to respond to the hysteria of the housing shortage. And they gained untold riches as they converted greenbelts, so-called, to densely packed urban town lots. To compound this wave of destruction, the county assessor was not only forced by law and custom to assess a new subdivision according to its value as intensely used urban property, but he assessed the adjacent farmland as potentially the same--a self- fulfilling prophecy which spread like wildfire. I took some Xeroxes of one of the hearings that had to do with the extinguishing of the Adohr [Ranch] dairy farm, which was the largest dairy in America, right in the city limits and far removed from any one of these centers. A character named [Spiros G.] Ponti developed it, and, well, it was just a field day. A president of the National Association of Home Builders in his district, a man who successfully completed a great many projects, Mr. Ponti submitted a petition submitted by people in favor of the application (not nearby residents) and said that he had built 947 homes in the past year that sold for over $10.5 million and stated that the proposed subdivision was well planned, recognized the proposed freeway, and included sites for a school, playground, and business property. He said he was not an investor or speculator but "just a home builder, " and that he had built homes for seventeen years. He boasted that lots would contain a thousand square feet more than the minimum, which was five thousand square feet. In response to a question by the chair, he said that they had set aside eight acres for a school site and five acres for a park and a playground, and that the property will be held until the department concerned has the necessary funds to purchase the property. The homes would be for veterans and other citizens of the community, he explained, and the homes will be a credit to the community. The next speaker in favor of the proposal was J. W. 0'Sullivan, commander of the Los Angeles County Council of Am Vets [American Veterans] , who made a minor career supporting the applications of home builders and opposing public housing. Flaunting his campaign hat, he testified that three years after discharge the veterans' first need was low-cost housing, that the only way to get it was by mass production, and threatened that if they didn't get their homes this way, "They will get them in some other manner--government subsidy!" He explained how the magnanimous builder would pass any savings on to the lucky veteran, who would realize a profit of $5,000 if he had to sell his bargain, and that this was not a get-rich-quick scheme, [laughter] that Mr. Ponti appropriated additional sums of money to landscape the surrounding grounds, making the community a beauty spot. To assure the commission of the purity of his motives, Mr. 0'Sullivan said that he spoke, "in the interest of public welfare and convenience."

LASKEY

Oh, my. Where was the Adohr Ranch?

ALEXANDER

Where was it in the Valley? Well, that's a good question. I couldn't tell you exactly, except that it was on the south side of the Valley, out quite a ways, I suppose. Would it be near Tarzana?

LASKEY

But it did get developed by Mr. Ponti.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, it did get developed by Mr. Ponti. It was developed under a creative section of the zoning ordinance, which contemplated planned unit developments, PUDs, and they would get favored treatment if they were planned comprehensively to have amenities that the community needed. They were to offer the land for community needs, such as schools and that sort of thing, free to the community. But he didn't see it that way.

LASKEY

I'm not surprised.

ALEXANDER

He was asked if he had made an analysis of developing the property in half-acre lots as currently zoned. It was already zoned so that it was possible to change this dairy to suburban areas. Mr. Ponti said it was impossible, since development costs ran from $3,000 to $3,500 an acre, making it impossible to offer homes for less than $10,000, which he had to do.

LASKEY

Did he finally do that?

ALEXANDER

About two months later, the commission received a letter from Mr. Marlow, who had spoken on behalf of Ponti, questioning the right of the commission to require land for municipal facilities, which the Adohr Ranch owner had been asked by the commission to donate free of charge if the application were approved. Instead of exceeding their authority, as Mr. Marlow charged, however, they were complying with the ordinance permitting self-contained communities with town-lot subdivisions, provided adequate open spaces and municipal facilities, utilities, and services are made available in a manner satisfactory to the commission. The case was too important and the stakes too high for the landowner and the builder to give up their assault easily. Subsequently, the city council overrode the commission by the two-thirds vote required, the mayor vetoed the council's action, and the council overrode the mayor's veto by the required three-fourths majority. Don't tell me they weren't paid off. Well, one significant thing that happened during the period while I was on the commission was studies by our department of a new concept called redevelopment. The studies of the [Los Angeles City] Planning Department, studies for redevelopment, were used both nationally in the development of a federal law and in Sacramento in the development of state law, enabling local communities to set up redevelopment agencies or to establish redevelopment agencies as city councils. And while I was still on the commission the laws came into effect, and [Fletcher] Bowron appointed the first redevelopment agency of the city [Los Angeles City Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)]. Bill [William T.] Sesnon [Jr.] was appointed chairman, and he remained chairman for over twenty years. Milton [J.] Brock [Sr.], vice-chairman, was a home builder, a reliable one; Howard L. Holtzendorff, secretary-treasurer, was a director of the [Los Angeles City] Housing Authority. One of the requirements of the law of redevelopment was that if redevelopment displaces people, housing for those people must be found for them within the price range of what they've been paying. That required, in many cases, a housing authority. Ed [Edward W.] Carter of the Broadway and Phillip [M.] Rea were also members of the first redevelopment agency. William T. Sesnon, Jr., a descendant of the pioneer ranch family, stuck with it for twenty years through thick and thin (it was mostly thick), during the years when the law was being challenged in the courts. And the Bunker Hill redevelopment area, which was the largest of its kind in the country, was being challenged right and left. He finally saw it through to the first major building in that redevelopment, which was the Union Bank Building at the corner of Fifth [Street] and Figueroa [Street], and then second was Bunker Hill Towers, where I was involved. This [agency] has become the most powerful planning force in the city.

LASKEY

Why would the CRA have more power than the planning commission?

ALEXANDER

They have money. They can do things, they can act. The planning commission can regulate, and I didn't go into that part. Part of the regulation was subdivision zoning, for instance. Those are all limitations, conditional uses and special conditions. Those are laws, and they're not very creative in that they don't have any dynamo to make them go. But in the case of redevelopment, which started out with a good deal of subsidy, in order to get them federal subsidy, to give them leverage to acquire the land that was considered blighted--and actually, unproductive economically is what it came down to--the way it finally got through Congress, the definition of--

LASKEY

What was your opinion of the way that Bunker Hill was redeveloped?

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't expect a pear tree to produce fish. The way the law was enacted by Congress finally-- It started out as a slum-clearance idea, and I was very much a part of the national and statewide scene in this effort. The way it finally was enacted by Congress, a blighted area was defined as one which is uneconomic- -in other words, where it costs the city more to maintain it than it pays in taxes. You have a ledger, and you receive so much in taxes and you know how many fire calls you get in that area and how many cases of TB are there. They add all this cost up, and it's a costly thing to have this millstone around your neck, this old place. Of course, it had its charm at a certain period. As a matter of fact, I forgot about this. Before the redevelopment law that finally got in, there was a Works Progress Administration [WPA] attempt at redevelopment in the prewar period under the Roosevelt administration .

LASKEY

Oh, really.

ALEXANDER

I worked as an employee, not as a principal, with a group of architects who were proposing to redevelop Bunker Hill under this law. And it was declared unconstitutional when we had gone through-- We went through the business of planning and what should be done and so forth, and we went back to Washington to get this thing approved. And we found stiff opposition from some very influential forces in Los Angeles, who just happened to own some of the best whorehouses in the city.

LASKEY

Oh, okay.

ALEXANDER

And --

LASKEY

Just happened to be on Bunker Hill.

ALEXANDER

And also, what property was rented to Chinese and other low-income people had the highest rent per square foot per person that you'd find anyplace. Much higher than-- You think about high-rent things as being a thousand dollars a month places. But if you figure out the square-foot cost of rent and you figure that you have a whole family living in one room in an old slum in Bunker Hill, or maybe two families, they're paying through the nose for that little space. Well, anyway, we were frustrated by finding that there was all this opposition from these Presbyterian landowners-- only to find that the WPA effort was found unconstitutional in a project in Atlanta before we got it any further. But when Congress finally enacted a legal thing, it applied, for instance, to the Monterey Hills, where there isn't a single house and there's no malaria. There's nothing at all going on there, because in the first oil boom in the city, where oil wells were built right in what is downtown now, cheek by jowl, the whole Monterey Hills area was assumed to have a lot of oil under it. And engineers laid out tracts of land there on a rectilinear basis, with streets that nobody could possibly climb because they're so steep.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 3, 1986

ALEXANDER

These lots that were not feasible to develop were sold throughout the United States, from Maine to Florida, to people who wanted to speculate in this oil that was coming right out of the ground in downtown Los Angeles. And this was only a half a mile or so away from downtown, and it was just a perfect place for oil to be found. They'd buy these lots, and then two or three generations later, these people who had inherited these lots would look in their safe-deposit box and see that this lot must be valuable now. And it was not valuable to build on. It didn't have oil under it, as far as anyone could tell, and yet people were hanging onto this darned stuff. And it was an uneconomic situation. So since it was not economically viable, it became subject to redevelopment. As far removed from slum clearance as you can possibly get, but this was according to the law. Now, you get to Bunker Hill, and that was a combination of things. Bunker Hill redevelopment had been planned one way or another for many, many years. One plan was to bulldoze the thing down to make it honest and level with the rest of the downtown city. That was the [Henry A.] Babcock plan, by an engineer whom I respected very much, but he made this for some downtown property owners. I think that it was inevitable under the terms of the redevelopment law [that] it should be redeveloped the way that it was.

LASKEY

Was it possible to save part of Bunker Hill, at least some of the older buildings that were part of the heritage of the city? Was it ever considered?

ALEXANDER

I don't think it was ever considered. Of course they were not respected the way they are today. So politically it wasn't feasible. Practically, I don't see how it could have been done. In that [John Randolph] Haynes Foundation thing that I wrote, the second half that was not published was devoted to a specific plan for the development of Chavez Ravine as a place, a decanting place for the people from Bunker Hill, in that plan right there.

LASKEY

This is Rebuilding the City: [A Study of Redevelopment Problems in Los Angeles]. It's done in 1951. This is a map book.

ALEXANDER

Nineteen fifty-one, was it? Then it was after. It was a long time before they got around to redeveloping Bunker Hill.

LASKEY

But you do talk in this book, which I'm going to come to a little later, about Bunker Hill being one of the major areas considered for redevelopment. I think there were eleven different areas that you list, and you talk about Bunker Hill, and then the pictures and the discussions on Chavez Ravine. And then the need for revitalization or redevelopment of these areas because they cost the city so much money.

ALEXANDER

Well, in a way it was a major victory to get a portion of Bunker Hill devoted to residential use at all. And it was a pioneering venture that seemed risky to people who seemed interested in residential development. Because why is it that people don't live downtown anymore? Well, unless they had just come out from living on Park Avenue [New York City], they couldn't imagine living downtown. "Who would want to do that?"

LASKEY

Well, all the development had been away from downtown, too. They were developing our valleys.

ALEXANDER

Well, we had to figure out how much it cost for people to commute and how much they would save if they lived in an apartment there and walked to work. I lived in the twenty-three-story Bunker Hill Towers. I had an apartment there in the seventies. Anyway, it was inconceivable to a lot of people, especially developers or people with money.

LASKEY

We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves here. We'll come back to Bunker Hill Towers. In talking about the differences between the CRA and the city planning commission, I think one of the watershed points, or what you started to talk about some time ago and we never got back to, was what happened to Forest Lawn.

ALEXANDER

How does Forest Lawn fit in with redevelopment? Were you trying to get a connection there?

LASKEY

No, I think what happened to Forest Lawn is that, well, essentially the planning commission was powerless in the long run to stop what Forest Lawn did. Because you don't have the powers that eventually the CRA would have. You don't have that kind of clout.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. For instance, before the construction of the freeway passed, well, what became Riverside Drive-- Before-- I don't know. What is that, the 605?

LASKEY

The Golden State [Freeway].

ALEXANDER

Before the construction of the Golden State Freeway and before land was taken for various reasons around there, the Forest Lawn property constituted an ideal addition to Griffith Park in that it would provide a great deal of relatively flat land, some of which has been taken up by other uses since then. So, many people were plugging for its use as Griffith Park. Well, we didn't have any money. The [Los Angeles City Recreation and] Parks department didn't have any money for that purpose. But if we were the redevelopment agency, we'd say, "That's the best use for that land. We'll buy it." And the planning commission doesn't have that power. It can regulate, but they can't say, "That's a great idea. We'll chip in on it." which is what the redevelopment agency can do today. The way that law works has its pros and cons, I think. Especially since Proposition 13 a lot of counties are raising hell with cities for having redevelopment areas that detract from county taxes. The state law that permits the redevelopment agency to impound the difference in taxes between the taxes prior to development and the taxes after redevelopment-- And I'll be darned if I know how they handle inflation. But in any event, that gives them a hell of a whack of money for something. Well, even in the city of Carson, it was a big factor. And they tried to be good citizens. I think they've done a remarkable job throughout the state. I haven't heard of any real scandal in the handling of this buying and selling of land. I mean scandal in the usual political sense. They may be scandalous in some people's eyes about some of the things they do, but it's remarkable to me that in all that money involved, there hasn't been, as far as I know, a big blowup that there should have been, following history. I think that once any redevelopment agency has paid through the nose for land--in other words, the community in effect has paid through the nose for acquiring land substandard in some way--that the community should retain title to it forever and simply lease that land. Eventually that might mean that all cities would be leased land, which I think would be good. I think the major curse of the cities is caused by land speculation.

LASKEY

Did you propose this when you were on the planning commission?

ALEXANDER

Yes, I talked about it.

LASKEY

They must have found that incredibly scandalous. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes, that's communist, communist talk. Especially regarding mass transit, I did a great deal of calculating to convince myself, first, that it could be done. If a mass rapid-transit system is planned, and especially if it's planned not to compound the present strangulation of congestion, but planned in areas that would benefit most from a system, in other words, [areas] not too highly developed at the present time-- And if, before implementation, it would buy land in a half-mile radius from each proposed station and then build the system and lease the land after the system is in operation, the system wouldn't cost them a nickel, except to the people who leased the land, which would then be desirable as next to a station. Well, I even wrote about this proposal in great detail with facts and figures and examples in history, in Canada particularly, to a congressman whom I considered one of the most liberal in the Congress, George [E.] Brown--great guy as far as I'm concerned. He's the only congressman in history who has twice voted one to 100 percent--I mean one [against] everybody else. And each one was a Vietnam appropriation. Anyway, he said, "It won't fly. It will be called communist. You can't do it." Well, anyway, it's not communist, but it makes great sense. We struggle on and don't have any kind of a system. In planning the San Francisco BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] system they didn't even think to look into what the price escalation would be in land around their stations until it was already half built and they were in trouble. That's too late.

LASKEY

I'm always surprised when something like that happens, because I assume that people who are involved in these multibillion dollar operations, that's what they're there for, to consider these aspects and to consider what kinds of influences and inputs these major changes will have on our lives. And so often these important elements get overlooked. So what did happen with Forest Lawn?

ALEXANDER

Well, let's try to make it brief, I guess. Mr. Eugene U. Blalock was the attorney and a member of the board of Forest Lawn who planned everything and appeared before the commission. He was an eloquent spokesman for Forest Lawn. And he was quite aware of the new planning law, in which he would have to apply for conditional use. So he wanted to test it, he wanted to test the commissioners. I didn't realize this until much later. But we got an innocent little application for a nineteen- acre extension of the existing Forest Lawn into the city of Los Angeles near Eagle Rock. It really didn't amount to beans, but I found in reviewing it recently that it took seventeen pages of minutes to record that little stinking case that hardly anybody objected to. We surely didn't, but we did require certain conditions. This was the first conditional use we were asked to address, and during that review he found only one commissioner who raised an objection to something and that was Sam [P.] Lev, a real estate man from the Valley who was naive and sweet as could be. And later we got the first case of "a new and more beautiful Forest Lawn" to serve the San Fernando Valley, to be adjacent to Griffith Park on the Providencia Ranch. It was a ranch that had been used by the movie industry for a jillion westerns and right near Hollywood, very convenient. I guess Warner Brothers [Inc.] did a lot of pictures there. And we were alerted, just before it came before us, by an editorial in the Hollywood Citizen News that forecast just about what was going to happen. Well, we soon found that Commissioner Lev was invited by Forest Lawn to make an appraisal of the ranch. This was before it was known to be proposed for a cemetery. And he even came to the commission for their approval of his plan, that if they [Forest Lawn] came before the commission with any action, of course he would disqualify himself. So the commission agreed that that was okay, not realizing that if Forest Lawn could get three commissioners in that position they would avoid going to the commission at all. Sure enough, he did have to disqualify himself. And [Glen E.] Huntsberger, another commissioner, a Cadillac automobile dealer from the Valley, disclosed to us that his mother's estate included a very large and valuable painting and Forest Lawn was considering buying it. So he disqualified himself. And a person that I had considered a good friend, who lived in the [Baldwin Hills] Village as I did and was a commissioner on one of the other commissions, approached me one evening with the news that Forest Lawn would very much like me to change my attitude, which had already been revealed, and that if I did, I would get no end of commissions from Forest Lawn--and they had a great big building program.

LASKEY

Who was this?

ALEXANDER

The commissioner who approached me? An advertising man. Bob Hixson, That's not important, anyway.

LASKEY

What was your response to that?

ALEXANDER

Well, I was disgusted. My response was, "I'm not starving yet. My practice isn't in very good shape yet, but Lord deliver me from that one." I was not interested anyway. I didn't realize the implications until later, after I had resigned from the commission in 1951. After [Samuel W.] Yorty became mayor, I got a call from [Charles] Luckman saying, "Yorty would like to appoint me president of the planning commission. Would that interfere in any way with my getting any city work?" I said, "Well, it might not, but Roger Arnebergh, the city attorney, has told me that it would be a felony." He said, "Well, thank you very much." And he didn't accept the appointment. He instead got the zoo. [laughter] Well, anyway, it went through the first hearing. I conducted both hearings. Because [William H.] Schuchardt ' s [sense of] hearing was bad and he didn't feel able to conduct a hearing, and Lev, who was vice president of the commission, had disqualified himself. So Schuchardt asked me to conduct the hearing in both cases. In the first one, in 1946, we had five commissions 100 percent opposed. It would be the [Los Angeles City] Board of Public Works-- You see, the site proposed for this new and more beautiful Forest Lawn was to have the Whitnall freeway go through it. There was already a right-of-way for the city water and power for a big power line through it. It drained into the pumping station in the bed of the Los Angeles River, [the source of] almost 17 percent of our water supply. where it was feared by some that the embalming fluids in thousands of bodies would contaminate the water system. So we had the health department-- Well, there were five commissions adamantly opposed. So in spite of Dr. Fifield and all his pompous religious chicanery, we turned it down. And the city council didn't have enough votes to override. Incidentally, it was found that the conditional use does not require the mayor's approval or veto. So he had no chance to veto a conditional use. If it had been a regular ordinance or a regular resolution, he could veto it. So all [Forest Lawn] had to have was a two- thirds vote to override us. But they couldn't get it that first time. In the following two years, there was an election and there were three new members of the city council. One of those new members was immediately appointed chairman of the planning committee of the council, a plum which no new councilman had had before. And he later became a supervisor and came into real ill repute on other things, in any event.

LASKEY

This is Debs?

ALEXANDER

[Ernest E.] Debs, yes. Debs. In the second go-around the council could override us and did. In the meantime it was revealed in the Hollywood Citizen News that the state law provided for a cemetery being automatic wherever six or more bodies are buried. This was to take care of a ranch, for instance, where people were buried on their own property. And wherever six or more people were buried that became automatically a cemetery; you couldn't do anything about it. So in the period between the first and second hearings. Forest Lawn, according to the Hollywood Citizen News, found eight people who had died in penurious circumstances, such as the deaf-mute husband of a deaf-mute wife, who were in straits and to whom they offered the full treatment of a Forest Lawn funeral, flowers, cemetery, the whole bit--providing the widow would sign an agreement that at their will Forest Lawn could move the body at a later date to "a new and more beautiful Forest Lawn. " So when the council was about to vote Forest Lawn had these eight bodies on ice outside the fence, and the minute they got news via their walkie-talkie that the council had overridden the planning commission, they jumped the fence and started to bury bodies. There were some other heartrending tales which I can go into.

LASKEY

That's incredible.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

It really is.

ALEXANDER

Well, that's what happened.

LASKEY

That's what you had to deal with. I think it was interesting because you wrote, "This was only one example that led to my conclusion that the planning commission had enough power to keep politics out of planning, except in the most important cases." During those years that you were on the planning commission and before, you were also beset with political problems and personal attacks.

ALEXANDER

Most of this had to do with my support of public housing as a concept. During the Depression, it was not only the Boy Scouts, but solid American citizens who were lauded for their interest in helping the poorest people. And I grew up with the understanding that part of my life should be devoted to the community. During the Depression I had personal experience in feeling poverty, and I thought it was only natural and entirely the American thing to do to support a movement that I thought would help solve one of the most pressing problems in the land. This view was shared by many, many people in the country, especially in eastern older cities. And the people with whom I associated in conferences on the problem, of course, were all in favor of it. So it was somewhat of a shock to find the virulent opposition of the real estate lobby in California to the whole concept. Mayor Bowron, for instance, had associates in the National Council of Mayors, most of whom thought the public housing movement was a great thing for cities. It was help for one of their most pressing problems. He always took a position to support me in my position regarding public housing, as long as I made it clear that I was speaking for myself and not for the city. His opponents and mine tried to get me in various ways. They always would have to come to the conclusion that I was nobody's employee, and hence I could not be fired. Mayor Bowron supported me so that I could not be discharged from the commission, and they had no way to get at me except by innuendo and false statements made in the press. This was part of the era that became known as the McCarthy era, which I felt severely at times. I remember, as a member of the American Planning and Housing Association, I was invited to go to the first international conference on development and elected to go to the conference held in London. [I] stayed at a ladies' college, with no ladies in it at the time the conference went on, in Regents Park. It was Regents College, right around the corner from Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes had lived. The opening address was to be given by Mr. [Edward A.] Ackerman, who had been head of the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority. I was approached the day before with a request that I substitute for him, because he was not going to speak "on advice." I found that "on advice" meant that his State Department had told him not to speak, because there were communists, people from behind the Iron Curtain, attending the conference. So I agreed to this. I don't know what I spoke about, but it wasn't the TVA. But later, I visited some friends in Welwyn, one of the original new towns, built about 1902, something like that. It was one of the products of Ebenezer Howard's book [Garden Cities of Tomorrow] . We were watching the telly, and the Home Office was being questioned by one of the members of the house: "Why are you opposed to this meeting? This is the first time in recent English history that we have objected to people speaking freely, no matter where they're from or what they are speaking, as long as they simply speak." He said, "Well, it's not their papers and what they say at the conference, it's what they talk about at tea!" [laughter] Anyway, for the first time, McCarthy got to the English. So I didn't know whether my passport was going to be picked up or what. Meantime, back at the ranch here, at Los Angeles, I was a member of an organization that was fighting in favor of Proposition 14, a statewide housing amendment or measure. Such stalwart characters as Monsignor O'Dwyer, Mrs. Sumner Spaulding, Frank [B.] Wilkinson, Shirley Siegel, Hal [Harold F.] Wise, I think it is, and I, were members of this committee [the Citizens Housing Council]. And there was an opposing committee, of course, with enough money to hire a team of political promotionists . Without our request or knowledge, some young lady who favored our cause applied for and got a job as a secretary working for this political group that was opposing us. And every evening [she] would drop off into our mailbox a copy of an interoffice memo or two. So that I soon found-- One memo would ask, "Who's his boss? Who's Alexander's boss? Have him fired." Who's this, that, and the other. It was really a scream to get this inside view. However, I always found it a comfort to realize that I was my own boss and couldn't be fired and could speak my mind without rebuke.

LASKEY

Well, did they genuinely feel that you were a communist, or were they using this as a means--

ALEXANDER

Sure they were using it.

LASKEY

--to get you out of their hair?

ALEXANDER

I used to sometimes speak in a lion's den such as the Wilshire Realtors Association. I would start out by saying that I was pretty sure that my opponent, as I did, had driven there on socialized streets, under socialized streetlights, and had walked on socialized sidewalks, had just drunk a glass of socialized water, and had even been a product of socialized education. And that our very country was founded, our constitution was the result of a meeting called by George Washington to discuss two socialist enterprises, which the fledgling government carried out. One was the Cumberland Road and the other one was the Potomac Canal, both of them socialist enterprises. So I supposed I was a socialist, along with my opponent. Anyway, it was an exciting time and a frustrating time. What else can I say?

LASKEY

Well, I know they--

ALEXANDER

Oh, another thing. I was in the index and in the text of three successive Tenney Committee [California State Legislature Joint Fact-finding Committee on Un-American Activities] reports in the state of California. The Tenney Committee was the state equivalent of the Un-American activities committee, HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. I was charged with absolutely nothing; I was simply mentioned in the text. And any time that some stalwart Bircher wanted to hurt me in some way, he would simply say that I was in the Tenney report, and this would scare the hell out of people. And this occurred for years afterward. After I was appointed consulting architect to UCSD [University of California, San Diego], I was also at the same time doing a city planning job for Escondido. Escondido has almost as many retired admirals as Coronado Island. It's a rock-ribbed Republican scene, which I knew when I got the job. And I was informed on one occasion by the city manager that I was being accused of being a communist because my name is in this Tenney Committee report. [Jack B.] Tenney, incidentally, was ultimately sent to jail for some corruption--I don't remember what. And [I was informed] that [University of California] President [Clark] Kerr had sent an emissary down from the university to listen to my presentation before the council, where it was bound to come up. So he said, "You had better go around and see the newspaper editor or publisher, " the local [one] (this was Escondido ) . Which I did. And he asked me if I had had a security clearance. I said, "Yes, I just happen to." And he said, "What was it and how did you get it?" I just told him it was low clearance--it was no special deal. But the Rand Corporation at one point wanted me to be a consultant, and they said it would help my work with them if I would get a security clearance, which I had gotten. He said, "Can you get me a xerox?" So I said, "Sure I could." Well, I hadn't gotten it before the meeting, but the meeting went off without any problem at all. I'm sure President Kerr was satisfied. But that's just one of many instances where somebody would attempt to interfere with my work or keep from having me hired to do a job. It would happen many times, especially in school work.

LASKEY

And this would have been somewhat after the fact of the McCarthy period.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. That's 1961 or '62.

LASKEY

So the after effect--

ALEXANDER

It was ten years.

1.13. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 3, 1986

ALEXANDER

The accusations, for the most part, in the Tenney Committee [California State Legislature Joint Fact- finding Committee on Un-American Activities] reports were that I was seen leaving a certain meeting with a certain Frank [B.] Wilkinson. Frank Wilkinson was the public affairs officer for the [Los Angeles City] Housing Authority, [and] therefore a suspect character. And of course, he became infamous in their eyes by refusing to answer questions about his party affiliations at a later date. A solid American citizen. And I personally felt very close to the founding of our country (my ancestors had been here three hundred years ago) and intimately concerned with the American ideals, which of course made me more suspect in the eyes of newcomers, witch-hunters. [laughter] Well, at the same time this was going on, one of the most important commissions I got at the time was to work with Orange Coast College. Does that tie in with what you were thinking about?

LASKEY

Yeah, just the fact that you did have a career, that you had made the decision in 1945 to resume your architecture career, and that you had a career that was running concurrently with your time on the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission.

ALEXANDER

I was trying to get it started, yeah. One thing, the Baldwin Hills Village organization was not permitted by the War Production Board to build a commercial center until after the war. I was commissioned to design some shops and a Thrifty Mart. And at the same time, the Baldwin Hills Company agreed to finance what amounted to an office for me, as a field office in which I acquired a part ownership, jointly owned by them and by me. So I had an office which was a sort of a shack on skids. It was very well lighted, served very well as a drafting room.

LASKEY

Now, was this at the site?

ALEXANDER

At the site on South La Brea Boulevard. So from that I oversaw the design of shops and the supermarket. One of the first important commissions, important in my future, was being hired by Orange Coast College. They had sought the services of Herb [Herbert J.] Powell--Smith, Powell, and Morgridge I believe was the firm name--who had done community college work. As part of their [proposed] contract to provide a master plan, they had insisted on being the executive architects of [all] the work to follow. And Basil Pederson, the president of the college, refused to go along with such an idea. So I think I had sort of a stall for an exhibit at a meeting, a statewide meeting of school administrators, and Pederson and his assistant in charge of business. Bill Kimes, approached me for an interview and told me the story. I called Herb Powell, and he said, "By all means, go ahead and take the job if you want to have it on the basis that they will go for." And I was only too eager to do so. The understanding was simply a gentleman's agreement that I would be paid on a time basis for the master planning. There was no formal agreement that I would get to design all the buildings in the master plan, but that I should be assured of their good will, and that as long as I provided satisfactory services, I would do their work. Well, Pederson was a careful Mormon who abhorred being in debt and refused to go along with any thought of a bond issue (which was going into debt) and insisted on a tax-rate increase of ten cents a hundred or something like that, so that he could build one building a year.

LASKEY

Cash.

ALEXANDER

Cash on the barrel head. So every year for ten years I had a budget for a certain building and I was to spend as much of that budget as I could in building what I was building, but I was not to spend any more. This was quite a trick, especially when the Korean War came along and all of a sudden we had inflation. But over a period of years, we performed very well as far as our estimates versus the final costs were concerned. And in each case, I designed the building and had a joint-venture agreement with [Dick] Pleger, who had his office in Newport Beach in the district and who performed the construction services. This went along swimmingly until Orange County architects split from the Southern California chapter [of the American Institute of Architects (AIA)] to form their own Orange County chapter, at which point they sent a committee around to see the board of directors of the Orange Coast College district, insisting that an architect with an office in Orange County should be hired instead of me. So the directors, with tears in their eyes, at the next meeting told me that they had decided what they should do, in spite of the fact that my services were satisfactory and so on and so forth. So I found myself in the unenviable position of being a firm AIA supporter and finding the goddamned organization doing something that an individual architect was prohibited from doing. In any event--

LASKEY

Did you protest?

ALEXANDER

No, it would just have caused more bad-- I mean, would it get me anywhere? No, I didn't protest.

LASKEY

How much had you done for Orange Coast College at this point?

ALEXANDER

Well, I've a record somewhere. I think there were fifteen projects in ten years, one right after another.

LASKEY

You'd done the master plan, and then you had done quite a number of buildings.

ALEXANDER

Well, I think there were probably ten buildings, plus underground electric, this, that, and the other.

LASKEY

Was your master plan followed after you were no longer associated with them?

ALEXANDER

No. I mean, they didn't tear anything down. You see, this was started before Disneyland, at a time when more than half the campus was devoted to agriculture, because one of the prime employers in the area was agriculture.

LASKEY

Now, we haven't established where the college is.

ALEXANDER

Well, it's in Costa Mesa, which is northeast of Newport Beach and Balboa. The place has grown so drastically--that is, changed drastically--and the entrance at one time when it was originally founded-- Oh, incidentally, the site had been owned by the air force as a training base, not an airfield, and it became surplus property after the war. So a public agency like the junior college district or community college district could obtain the land free of charge, as well as any buildings on it. So they started the college [with] the existing air force buildings, all of which, except the chapel, were condemned by the state as unsatisfactory for seismic forces, and they permitted the college to continue to use them, providing that within a certain period of time they had supplanted all of the air force buildings or brought them up to code. So we had to play hopscotch; we couldn't tear down a building until we had something to replace it, and that should go in the right place in the ultimate plan. So this was kind of a hopscotch trick.

LASKEY

So the school was being carried out in the abandoned barracks of buildings, and you had to build a new campus almost around these extant buildings.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, since that appeared to be the best site for the buildings and the least desirable for agriculture-- that was a big important point. And the entrance, the main drag, still exists, but the frontage on the main drag has long since been sold by the junior college district for millions. And so the entrance to the college is from the opposite side from where we started; however, it's much closer to the center of the buildings. Well, having a new type of building with new requirements each year meant that I-- Since I was being a student of the situation, I had the time and took the energy to explore the specific needs of each building in detail and compare it and go around and look at other buildings of the same use on other campuses to see how they can be improved and so on. So that I became intimately familiar as an individual person, aside from the staff, with all of these academic and community needs and uses. Dr. Pederson was one of the prime movers and leaders in the community college movement in California. He based the college curriculum on a study of the job opportunities in the area. Of course, over a period of years, before he left his position, the needs of the community had changed radically. In fact, I remember in the first building, which was a technology building, in the portion devoted to classrooms we recommended removable and reusable partitions, not knowing that within the first year of use, they would find that TV repair suddenly became an important employer. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing during the war. I mean, it was known that there was such a thing, but nobody knew that it was going to go boom! So we had to change the use of certain rooms in that building to TV repair rooms and to different sizes and so forth. And it meant that in the first year of use, the additional cost of using removable and reusable partitions was paid for, but it was just by luck. But things changed radically. Where cattle raising and feeding was an important part of the program at the beginning--and I designed a cattle-feed shed as one of the items and a cattle-feed mill--today it's irrelevant.

LASKEY

Do they even use it anymore as an agricultural school?

ALEXANDER

No, I think it's been scrapped.

LASKEY

Well, I noticed on the list of credits for the college that Eckbo, Royston, and Williams were the landscape architects. Garrett Eckbo became an important name in landscape architecture--maybe he was then. How did you happen to get involved with him?

ALEXANDER

Well, I had gotten to know him in the heady public housing days. He was about as patriotic and radical as I was. Before establishing my office in that little building on South La Brea at the end of Baldwin Hills Village, I told Ray Knisley, the head of the Baldwin estate, who was also the head of Baldwin Hills Village, that I did need office space and did he have any suggestions. And he said that right across the street was the Sunset Fields Golf Course, and part of the installation was a little nineteenth hole where they had sandwiches and coffee and some drinks and so forth.

LASKEY

This is across La Brea?

ALEXANDER

Across La Brea. And next to this little nineteenth hole was a breakfast club that had not been used since before the war. It was a great big lamella-roofed warehouse- type building. I could have had two hundred draftsmen in there. He said, "You can use the whole darned thing, or part of it, free of charge. We're going to tear it down one of these days." They tore it down when the shopping center on Crenshaw Boulevard was built by A. [Albert] C. Martin [Jr.]. Well, anyway, there was a great big window looking out over the golf course right next to the little building that had the food in it. So I put some plywood partitions across, sixteen feet from the wall, and this wonderful wide window. And I had myself and the drafting board in there and--

LASKEY

That was it?

ALEXANDER

That was it. Well, I had some big drafting board tables that I bought from Lockheed [Aircraft], surplus postwar stuff. One day, after I had been commissioned by the church at Baldwin Hills Village to design a church for them at the corner of La Brea and Coliseum [Street], Garrett Eckbo walked in and said, "We've decided to start a southern branch of Eckbo, Royston, and Williams, and my wife and I are down here to start it."

LASKEY

He'd been operating in the [San Francisco] Bay Area?

ALEXANDER

Yes, oh yes, and I knew him pretty well and liked him very much. So I said, "Okay. You have an office?" He said, "No." I said, "You're welcome to use the space. And I have my first job for you, which is this church." So he designed the landscaping for the church, and before he put up a shop elsewhere he had drafting space. And that's how I knew him. He did all of my landscape work until I got a major project for the air force to design family housing, and he refused to do any work for any military establishment. I took the position that it was for the poor bastards and their families who were in it, but he took the position that it was still for the military and he would have none of it. So I went to Bettler [C.] Baldwin for a few projects. Eventually I went back to Garrett's firm, so that he's done almost all the [landscaping] work for me during my entire career. And I see him frequently now.

LASKEY

I was going to ask you if you see him now.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. Good friend.

LASKEY

Well, when you got the contract for Orange Coast College, which was just two years after the church, how large was your office then? Was it still just you?

ALEXANDER

No. By the time the commercial project at the end of Baldwin Hills Village was a contract, I could move my office right down there where the action was. So then I had an office. It was mostly Bobs: Robert Pierce, who was with me forever, almost forever, and Robert Hindinger and Robert [A.] Kennard.

LASKEY

Oh, good grief. Was it requisite that they be named Robert?

ALEXANDER

No. But it turned out that way.

LASKEY

What did you call each other?

ALEXANDER

Bob. Just say Bob.

LASKEY

Just say Bob and everybody looked up.

ALEXANDER

By that time, Walter Graydon was with me. So we had the Baldwin Hills shops (I started one building), the master plan, and a building at Orange Coast College.

LASKEY

Now, in the process, at the same time, you had become involved with UCLA.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, I was going to mention that next, yeah. That was an amusing thing. A list of projects was in the paper on the building program for UCLA, and it was an ambitious, big program. I could see that I didn't stand a prayer of a big job, but I would take a look at anything I could get. I took a look at one of them; it was the UCLA elementary demonstration school [UES] , which was a very small project compared to the others. So I asked Carl [C.] McElvy, whom I had known when he was in charge of a private group working on a beach plan for Southern California beaches. I was on the planning commission and he was in charge of this office set up by P. [Percy] G. Winnett. He had become the head of the architectural engineering office of the campus at UCLA. So I knew him, and I called him and I said, "How do you get a job there?" He said, "Well, the consulting architect is Dave [David C.] Allison. If he gives the green light you're pretty sure to be recommended and you'll probably get it if it's not overly contested by a lot of other people." So I said, "Oh, yeah, I know Dave, but he doesn't know anything I can do. I mean, I don't know him well. He doesn't know my architectural ability." But Dave had an art studio. He had retired from the office, and he painted in a little studio out in the [San Fernando] Valley somewhere--I forget where. So I called him and made an appointment to see him. My school experience had been in designing new elements and remodeling and so forth for a Los Angeles city school. I forget which one right now, Manchester Avenue or something. Anyway, I was not proud of the results. So when Dave asked me, "What schools have you designed?" I said, "None." He said, "Well, you may be just the guy for the job. You know, this UCLA outfit is crazy. They're not like a normal school." He said, "How would you go about it?" I said, "Not knowing them at all, I would attend classes, I would see what they're doing, I would ask questions, I would try to find out what their requirements are." And he said, "That sounds good." He said, "I think I'll recommend you, as long as you haven't done another school." [laughter] So that was the first prestige job that I got because I hadn't designed anything like it, or said I hadn't. This resulted in a very satisfying relationship with the faculty, and Bob Pierce was my mainstay and at my side at all times. I conducted meeting after meeting, hundreds of meetings, I guess, with the faculty. I even sent my two kids there to summer school to see how it was from a worm's-eye view, and I attended classes when it was over in the neighboring-- Was it Nelson Street? Corinne [A.] Seeds conducted a demonstration school in a nearby public school.

LASKEY

Oh, I didn't know that.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, did you know about Corinne Seeds? She founded that teaching school when UCLA's predecessor was the [State] Normal School on the site of the library.

LASKEY

Downtown.

ALEXANDER

Then it was [for] the library that people put up $400,000 in gold coin to buy the site from the state, [which] gave the state the ability to set up a school on Vermont [Avenue] . And from there it went to UCLA. She followed it all the way from the library site out to UCLA. She had studied under [John] Dewey and [William H.] Kilpatrick and espoused the Dewey system of learning by doing. And I found it fascinating. The first elements that we designed and built at that time were influenced by the fact that they said 50 percent of their instruction would probably take place outdoors. And it takes a half an hour for your eyes to adjust from indoors to outdoors, usually. So I put in skylights, which had advantages for that, but they [the faculty] also wanted to be able to show slides. Then that resulted in an ugly contrast between the wonderful light. But we had to devise shades. I mean, we didn't know anything about mechanical shutters or anything like that. But I thoroughly enjoyed working with every project that they had for all six grades and kindergarten, and devising a place for a log cabin in the middle of a grove of redwood trees that had been planted twenty-two years before.

LASKEY

You might describe the site.

ALEXANDER

The site is at the end of Stone Canyon, parallel to Sunset Boulevard, adjacent to the north entrance to the campus. And since it was not really part of the campus as [George B.] Allison conceived of it, he said it did not have to conform to the Etruscan or whatever- -

LASKEY

Northern Italian Renaissance.

ALEXANDER

Right. So I was freed by him from conforming to style. And everything derived from observations and discussions with the faculty and students. One of their projects-- Each year there was a theme [for each class] that ran through, sometimes only half a year, that had been developed by some graduate student and tried out and found out to be the most successful for engaging the interest in that age group. Included [in the plan] was something called the museum, which contained artifacts which would be brought out at the beginning of a term of instruction and would provide an exhibit for each grade which would pique their interest in a subject. So from then on, their entire course of study was motivated by their questions and curiosity aroused by these artifacts. For instance, one course of study would be built around the theme of the westward movement in America, and as a part of that exercise there would be a log cabin--or it wasn't a log, it was actually a board and bat cabin -- rustic, out in the redwood grove, and unknown to the building inspector. Not that it was unsafe or anything like that, but it wasn't a part of the official plans. There would be a waterwheel for the sixth graders to see how power was made, in this stream that flowed through the property. I was told at the very beginning by McElvy, "You're going to have to put that stream in a culvert." And I said, "Are you sure?" So we had a major contest in which the city brought in experts from the health department to show how it [the stream] was going to cause all kinds of diseases to the poor students: "They are going to fall in and get wet, mosquitoes are going to breed and sting them to death, and there is a hotel upstream and you don't know what they might put in the water." And I stuck by my guns and got the wholehearted backing of not only the students and the faculty, but the parents. And the final clincher was that it was going to cost $300,000 to put it in the culvert .

LASKEY

That's always the final clincher.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, anyway, they built a replica of Los Angeles harbor into which they could divert stream water. The Spanish heritage in Southern California was for-- I forget which grade, but they built an adobe oven outdoors, outside of the classroom, for baked bread and stuff like that. And in the process, I found that they learned simple arithmetic naturally, as a by-product of living and of studying these various things. What do you call it? A core curriculum?

LASKEY

What were the classrooms like, aside from the skylights? Did you make special adjustments for the inside-outside teaching?

ALEXANDER

Well, the inside-outside teaching was simply sliding glass doors and skylights. But this was a demonstration school, and that meant graduate students would come in to observe how teaching was taught. And I originally thought, well, we're going to have to provide long slits of one-way mirror, one-way vision glass. Not at all. I was told that that would result in curiosity on the part of the kids. They'd find out soon, and then they'd be anxious about what was going on back there. So in visiting many classes, I found that the kids didn't pay any attention. The older students, the graduate students, would take their places in the classroom in a segregated area. The kids by that time were so excited about what they were doing they could care less, and they got used to it. Maybe the first time that happened, that wasn't true, but I saw that it didn't make any difference. So that was a lesson well learned. We did position certain outdoor activities related to certain classes, classrooms. And one thing about this means of teaching that few people realize until they try to do it is that it takes more work on the part of the staff and teachers than teaching by rote and doing what the school board tells you to do. A setup was devised in which two classrooms were joined at one end by a teachers' preparation room. There would be a student teacher in each of the classrooms and a master teacher overseeing both of them. And behind the scenes, in this big teacher's preparation room, they did all the things that made the system work. It was just difficult and more exciting, and the children learned more and better. Every year or so there would be an uprising of concerned parents: "Johnny hasn't even learned such and such a table. He doesn't know the table of the sixes or the sevens." Well, they didn't teach it by rote until the fifth or sixth grade, whereas in the elementary school or in the public school system, they start out day one with these tables until it becomes like brushing your teeth. Anyway, it was found in several studies that the kids who went to Emerson Junior High [School] from UC UES [University Elementary School, UCLA] had a better preparation for arithmetic than those who came from public elementary schools. Well, that was very exciting, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. And it was many years later when McElvy, still at UCLA, called me and said, "They're going to have an addition for kindergarten and nursery school, and our policy, normally, is to go to the original architect. Would you like to continue it?" And I said, "You bet." So that's the way Neutra and Alexander are credited with the addition for the kindergarten and nursery school. There was a funny thing that happened on the way to the elementary school. The entrance was planned in such a way that there was an enormous sycamore tree right next to the entrance to the administration building and hence to the whole classroom complex.

LASKEY

Right near the Sunset--

ALEXANDER

On the Sunset side. There's parking along there in the strip. It was a sort of a sentimental relationship between this enormous sycamore tree and the entrance to the school. Two weeks before construction was to start, the tree fell down right on top of where the school was going to be. And it turned out that everything had looked solid on the outside and the inside was all hollow, eaten out by insects, termites. Just luck.

LASKEY

Absolute luck.

ALEXANDER

The site was so beautiful. When I first saw it, I saw a pair of fawns and their nursing mother on the far bank of the little stream. I saw raccoons. It was just a delightful little dell.

LASKEY

It still is.

ALEXANDER

Well, it's been spoiled to some extent. They put a school for the deaf or blind or somebody.

LASKEY

Oh, the [Grace M.] Fernald School, that sort of--

ALEXANDER

Whatever it is.

LASKEY

Sort of at the end.

ALEXANDER

They did put the stream in a pipe there. But that took a piece of the site. That was too bad, anyway.

LASKEY

It still functions well.

ALEXANDER

I enjoyed meeting with the parents, who were an intelligent lot and gave me a lot of support when it came to questions about this strange-looking edifice. It was very strange looking.

LASKEY

Because of the skylights, the configurations of the skylights?

ALEXANDER

Well, it curved along the stream bank. It had a jagged roofline with the skylights facing north. Before this happened, I had thought a lot, philosophically, about what I should do as a typical approach to a building. One thing was to engage the fine arts in some way at the beginning, so that from the very start something would become part of the building and not something stuck onto it. So I had interviews with sculptors. Pigot Waring was one and Tony Rosenthal was another. I selected Tony, and then I told Carl McElvy that my plan was to have sculpture as part of the thing. He said, "You can't get that by the regents." I said, "Well, if it's within the budget?" He said, "Well, maybe, but you won't know that until you get bids." So I refused to lead the guy [Rosenthal] on to spend a lot of time on what he was going to do until we got to a point of having everything designed and we took bids. And of course at that point it's too late to really make it a part of the building. But there was money left over, and McElvy said, "What if you forgot something?" I said, "I don't think we forgot very much." "Well," he said, "there is money, so you go ahead and do what you can do." So I talked with Tony, who talked to the faculty and some of the students, and we found that they would like a theme symbol for the school. The symbol, as Tony conceived it, would consist of a pylon supporting a bronze platform on which there would be three animals representing the three great land masses of the earth, and it would represent "one world." The other thing was just outside the library in the little court, what I call the reading court, there would be a fountain or something like that. Well, they didn't want any water that people would drop books in. They didn't want a pool, but it might be okay if we had a spray pool. So Tony devised some fish on stilts with spray. Well, Welton Becket by then was the consulting architect--Allison had resigned--and Welton called me into his office to demand to know what's this about sculpture. And I told him enthusiastically. He said, "One world-- that's Henry Wallace, isn't it?" I said, "No, it's Wendell Willkie." He said, "Oh. Well, you better be careful about those fish. Someone's going to fall and put his eye out in those." I said, "Well, if I get the permission of the parents, what do you think?"

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 4, 1986

LASKEY

I noticed that you won a distinguished award from the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects for that building.

ALEXANDER

That was the Southern California chapter award. There was no national award program at that time. Southern California led the nation in having that event. Actually, to explain that honestly, I had-- As soon as the war ended, I had certain objectives that I had made up. I mentioned the one about involving fine arts in any project. I also thought I would try to obtain projects in the very highly scientific field of health services, hospitals, and that sort of thing. And to counterbalance that in the opposite end of the spectrum, as I saw it, I would try to get religious-related works, where emotion and spirit were the main considerations. And in the process I became involved in the Baldwin Hills [Community] Church and so on. Well, another part of what I decided to do, and carried out, was to join the AIA, go to every convention. Over a period of fifteen years I went to every one, maybe more than that. This had a background of having been asked by Dave [David J.] Witmer--was that prewar?--when there was going to be a convention in Los Angeles. That was prewar. Dave Witmer was the chairman of a committee of the Southern California chapter to host the convention, and he said nobody on his committee had the time to put in and would I agree to put in full time for a modest salary. And I jumped at the chance because it gave me an opportunity to get to know people. Among other things, I searched for a principal speaker, keynote speaker for the convention, and got to know Wally [John E. Wallace] Sterling, later Stanford University president, but at the time head of the [Henry E.] Huntington Library and Art Gallery, I should say. And he had become well-known by giving foreign-events commentary on the radio, and I found him to be a very exciting, charming character. So this humdrum legwork for the AIA proved very interesting and rewarding. As a result of that effort I joined the AIA, the Southern California chapter, and figured at the end of the war I would become as active as possible in the organization and also that I must get nationwide publicity. So I went out of my way and sacrificed to make trips to the East Coast, stopped in New York every occasion I could, got to know the editors of the three main architectural magazines, and that, again, over a period of time paid off. Well, this is background to talk about that award for the elementary school.

LASKEY

What did you see as the function and goals of the AIA?

ALEXANDER

Well, getting to know architects in other parts of the country on a noncompetitive basis. I mean, getting to know architects in the Los Angeles region was getting to know your enemies, [or] whatever you want to call them. In some cases they acted that way. But there was a vast difference between somebody like Herb Powell, who looked upon a colleague not so much as a competitor but as someone who could be helped by sharing experience, and on the other hand, a prominent member of the AIA Southern California chapter. When I called to ask him if I could see his working drawing plan for a student center at a community college, he said, "Why, that's unprofessional." I said, "What do you mean it's unprofessional? I'm not going to copy the darn thing. It's not unprofessional." Well, he insisted that it's unprofessional. I said, "Well, I don't need to see your drawings. I'll go around and see the building, anyway. I've been asked to do that by my client, and I'm going to do it. You can't stop me from seeing it." But there are two diametrically opposed viewpoints. One is highly competitive and secretive and the other wants to share everything that he does and knows. Well, okay. I wanted to say something about awards. It didn't occur to me at the time, but it has since. What happened at the time that the UES got the distinguished honor award, at the same award ceremony I received awards for-- Let's see, were there three? They were not distinguished awards, but they were honor awards for three buildings at Orange Coast College and a special award for the feeding shed at Orange Coast College. Well, the story behind that, as I look at it now, is that number one, my classmate from Cornell [University], Larry [Lawrence B.] Perkins of Perkins and Will [Partnership], was on the jury. And whereas I think his partner Phil [Philip] Will [Jr.] wouldn't be swayed by friendship and so forth, a thing like this, Larry was the kind, if he knew or thought that I had been involved with something, he'd probably be inclined to favor it. But the main thing was that Bill [William W.] Wurster was a member of the jury, and at a previous convention, a national convention, I was one of a few upstart young squirts who objected to the trend in selecting officers of the AIA nationally, which seemed to confine those elected to a rather small group of eastern architects who we looked upon as very stuffy and not very damn good designers and so on and so forth. So we put on a minicampaign at this convention to get Wurster elected as president of the AIA. We did not succeed, but Wurster, I think, was swayed by that in my favor. This is the way I'm looking at it now. You see, at the time I thought, good god, am I not something! I had five honor awards in one meeting. [laughter] Well, be that as it may, the designs had something to do with it, I'm sure. Of course Larry Perkins, especially with schools-- At that time the firm Perkins and Will did nothing but schools, and the UES design was an absolutely radically different design. It had a lot of thought behind it, had a lot of faculty and student involvement, and so forth. And he recognized that.

LASKEY

It was also your first published work, wasn't it?

ALEXANDER

It could very well be.

LASKEY

I think it was in John Entenza's Arts and Architecture.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, but before that-- Maybe that was the first one, I'm not sure. Anyway, there was a marvelous editor of the [Architectural] Forum--I forget his name now-- prior to Haskell. What was his name? [P. J. Prentice] Anyway, there was a really great architectural editor of the Forum magazine before Doug [Douglas] Haskell, who saw me, I guess, just as I was working on UES. And he said, "You know, the people around the country would be interested in this. This is a good one. I'd like to have it published in the Forum." So I said, "How does one go about things like this?" He said, "Well, the best way to do is to offer your work to one publisher. Don't broadcast it. And if the publisher or the editor says, 'Okay, we're interested,' stick by that and don't dilute your efforts." So I did that. And at the next convention of the architects, [the AIA] national convention, I met Doug Haskell, and he had been the editor of the Architectural Record. I remember we were in a hotel room. Doug was getting chummy with me and he said, "How about the UES? Is that ready for publication yet?" I said, "Yes, but I promised it to the Architectural Forum. " He said, "Well, I'm the new editor of the Forum." So he was a wonderful guy, just great. Well, that's about that. Where are we?

LASKEY

Well, we were talking about the AIA and UES. Then at the same time you were doing UES, you were doing the Baldwin Hills Elementary School.

ALEXANDER

Well, there's really no connection there, except that I wanted to design the school where my kids would go. I think you should understand- -anyone should understand--the system in an enormous public school system like that of Los Angeles. In order to keep peace in the family and keep people quiet, the people in charge of passing out school work seem to have a rotary index file, which they turn in such a way that they pass the work around. They'd be so highly criticized by concentrating on one superb firm dealing in nothing but schools, so they attempt to spread the work. So if you get your turn, then you don't get another turn for a while. And since I lived in Baldwin Hills Village, I called on the school board [Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education] to get work. They knew I was on the planning commission, which sometimes has school matters brought before it. I was accused by one of using my supposed influence in order to get work, but that was not my intent, at least. Anyway, it was just logical that I get the Baldwin Hills school. At that time-- Here I go. It is hard to remember names when you haven't dealt with them for fifty years or something. But the main representative of the state division of school planning was a very exciting guy whose main push was excellent day lighting for schools. And being interested in things like natural day lighting, I figured where the sun rises and where it sets and what time schools open and when are the most important periods of the day to-- Well, for instance, in the Baldwin Hills area, when do you want to keep the direct sunlight off your desk? This resulted in finding out that, sure enough, in the summertime, the sun sets pretty far north of west and rises pretty far north of east, and that the sun was welcome early in the morning when the kids first go to school, but late in the afternoon, especially in Southern California, it's hotter than hell and the glare's terrible. So this resulted in orienting the school classrooms to the southeast. [tape recorder off]

LASKEY

Okay, before we go on, I think I should correct something that I said, which was that your first published project was actually the Baldwin Hills church, and that was published by John Entenza in [Arts and] Architecture magazine in 1946. So the UES was published in the Forum, am I right?

ALEXANDER

That is correct. And I don't know what the date of that was. What was it you suggested we get into? Oh, the Schmoo House. Oh, that was an amusing incident. Through my efforts on behalf of public housing, I found that my main official enemy was the American Association of Home Builders, and I was simply flabbergasted when they officially asked me to design a postwar house for the returning veteran. I figured that the returning veteran was someone who, typically, was just forming a family and he didn't have the money to start with to support the size of house that he ultimately might need, and yet he might like to stay in the same place if he could. So one objective of the design was to have something that was expandable. Another objective, of course, was economically to make it as inexpensive as we could and still offer amenities that were not customary at the time in housing that was available to them. I figured that just as a matter of principle, a square plan is less costly than a long, thin, rectangular plan and that a two-story cube should be the most economical plan of all. So I designed a two-story cube with the adaptability of adding rooms to it, and the concept of this adding rooms indefinitely reminded me of the cartoons regarding the Schmoos. Now, who was the author of those cartoons? Do you recall?

LASKEY

Al Capp.

ALEXANDER

Oh yeah, Al Capp.

LASKEY

Part of the "L'il Abner" strip, wasn't it?

ALEXANDER

So I wrote Al Capp asking permission to call this design the Schmoo House. He responded graciously, giving me permission and pointing out that he had never given permission to anyone before to use the Schmoo, except in his own cartoons.

LASKEY

What were the Schmoos?

ALEXANDER

The Schmoos? They were little animals who could grow and grow and grow or reproduce and reproduce and reproduce and expand at will. The main concept was their expandability at will.

LASKEY

Didn't they also gratify everybody's wishes?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

They were sort of altruistic little creatures.

ALEXANDER

That's right, that's right. They'd do anything to make you happy. Yep. Okay, well, we made cost estimates and proved the economy of the darned thing and that it could be made attractive in appearance. But the two-storyness was anathema to the Southern California home builder, who figured the public wasn't ready for that yet. So it went over like a lead balloon and was never built.

LASKEY

You had a similar situation with Donald [W.] Douglas [ Jr . ] .

ALEXANDER

At the end of the war, I was still working at Lockheed [Aircraft] or some period after V-J Day. My main chore there at the time was to reduce the number of indirect workers--that is, workers that were not actually working on the assembly line building something that was necessary to be built. It's easy enough when you have so much to build and so many rivets to place and you can see how many men you need, or women, and you can reduce the manpower easily in proportion to the work that has to be done. In the case of indirect workers, those who are not right on the assembly line but who are necessary to perform some function, it's very difficult to get a handle on their need or usefulness. Yet you know darn well if you're trying to run the company that you ' re going to have to reduce that area in proportion to the workers. So that was quite a chore. Anyway, it was a time, this brief period at the end of the war was a time when every big airframe manufacturer in the country was scratching his head: What am I going to do with this plant and with all these employees? Almost universally they came to the conclusion that the biggest postwar need that had not been met all during the past five years was housing for the returning veteran, and that they could get into prefabricated housing, which became the great dream. It had been a prewar dream, for that matter. But this was going to be the great opportunity: they had the plant, the equipment, the people, the need, and they were going to meet the demand. Well, Bucky [R. Buckminster] Fuller designed a house along the lines of an airframe, aluminum. Everything came rolled in a big roll of aluminum, all the parts for the house, and it was made in Wichita, Kansas. I forget the name of the aircraft. Is it Fairchild?

LASKEY

I'll check it. [Beech Aircraft Company]

ALEXANDER

Also, of course, Donald Douglas [of Douglas Aircraft Company] had several plants around the country-- and there was talk of it at Lockheed. I was approached one time by the representative of United Auto Workers [UAW] to head their task force on housing, including prefab housing. Shortly after I left Lockheed, Howard [L.] Holtzendorff called me. He was the director of the housing authority and told me that he had been asked by Douglas to work on their dream, on Douglas's dream of prefab housing. The reason he was called in was that he had developed a very good rapport with organized labor, both from a standpoint of their sympathy with the cause of housing poor people and from the standpoint of good labor relations being required to get public housing built. He had been quite successful in working with organized labor, and this appealed, of course, in the building trades, about which Donald Douglas knew nothing. (He wanted this protection from the beginning. ) Howard asked me in on the design of the house as a consultant and told me that Douglas had a crew of some sixty engineers working on getting the bugs out of using the Lincoln panel as a basic building material. The Lincoln panel was a sandwich of anything, such as aluminum or hardboard or flitches of plywood, on two sides of a honeycomb. And in this case the honeycomb was made of craft paper, and it was similar in design or in principle to the Christmas bells which come all folded up, and which you open as if they were a butterfly and they turn into a three-dimensional Christmas bell. These come in at all sizes. They consist of paper that is pasted together at intervals, so that when they open there is revealed a sort of a honeycomb of air surrounded by these paper things. Well, this had been developed by a man named Lincoln as a concept, and it was a great concept, especially if it worked perfectly, if the gluing was just right. Because very often what would happen would be the uneven application of the glue in such a way that when prongs are put on two sides of this wedged paper block, which when expanded is supposed to become a honeycomb-- [It] would be pulled apart, hopefully to become a honeycomb, except that it would be great big egg crates in one location, little teeny-weeny close together ones in another. And it was a very uneven process. So one thing that Douglas engineers did was to design a machine that succeeded in gluing the craft paper uniformly, so that unerringly it would expand evenly when pulled apart. And the craft paper then became the vehicle for plastic, which was sprayed on it, and this liquid plastic would harden the paper. This plastic honeycomb then would hold the two sheets of whatever you used on the outside, would hold them apart, and also become very strong. Well, this Lincoln panel has become widely used in such things as inexpensive doors, interior doors. And with aluminum on both sides it becomes used on things like panels in aircraft construction. If you want to put a floor in above the baggage compartment, it's the lightest weight for its strength of any such material. And, in any event, that was the basic thought behind the prefab. The problem with any kind of prefab concept is that it's a cinch to work out something that will build the shell, but that's overlooking the fact that we've become used to having indoor plumbing and wiring all over the place, and people have become used to having a plug wherever they need it. And it's rather difficult to make things work in panels that can go together and also have all these advantages. In any event, we had worked up a plan for a typical house--I should say for a model house. This was going to be used in arctic regions, because these sandwiches did have an excellent heat insulation value, considering their weight and construction and so forth. Anyway, we had a full-size mock-up, or a full-size model, of the house built and erected in the parking lot of the Douglas "blackout plant, " which was the Douglas plant down in Lakewood, or maybe it's called Long Beach now. It's just on the border of Lakewood and Long Beach, and it was then the "blackout plant." So the great day came when we were to make our presentation. An engineer described the manufacture of the thing, I described the plan, Howard Holtzendorff described the labor, and so on and so forth. And at the end of my pitch I said, "And in order to reach the widest market, of course, we have to get the cost down to a reasonable extent. We therefore propose that the profit be not more than 10 percent." And Mr. [Donald W. ] Douglas, Sr., rose in righteous indignation and said, "Ten percent, forget it." And that was the end of the Douglas dream of prefab housing. Actually, what happened in history, when any specialized organization such as an airframe manufacturer gets into a bind in his own field and figures, well, he'll use his plant and equipment for something else, he becomes enthusiastic about that about as long as his regular business is in the depths of depression. And the minute somebody puts in an order for an airframe, he just forgets about the other thing. It takes tenth place in his dream. So it just hasn't worked that way.

LASKEY

Well, prefabricated housing certainly was the dream of a lot of architects, particularly after the war because of advances in technology and concern, like yourself, with social housing. Is it the lack of spectacular returns that kept it from ever being implemented on a large scale? Because the need was certainly there.

ALEXANDER

I don't know. There are so many factors. Fingers have been pointed at the building laws and at labor, and I just really don't know the reason that it has been so far completely unsuccessful. I know that where people have claimed prefabrication--they have factory-built parts and so forth--and they claim these great objectives of speed in erection and so forth, they have not come very close to the rate of housing production that we reached at Lakewood City. I know that the costs have not reached the low cost of pounding things together with nails in the field. But tremendous economies can be developed along the Lakewood City lines--that ' s traditional methods, traditional framing, and so forth. Public acceptance, of course, of the appearance has been a big factor, a claimed factor, anyway. I've just noticed quite recently, and not until recently, that some of the housing that is the nearest thing we have to real prefabricated housing-- I just passed a lot the other day with houses [mobile homes] that begin to look like attractive housing. I just don't know. I think the relative cost is quite a bit cheaper than housing that's built by traditional methods today. I still think there's hope for it.

LASKEY

Do you really?

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

After all this time. Are you involved with it at all?

ALEXANDER

No, but I just noticed on our trip up to Sonora, we passed a big lot full of, not trailers, but they're houses that they put on wheels and take to a site and they never move.

LASKEY

That's true.

ALEXANDER

I didn't price them, but I believe they're very much less expensive than houses that are being built by traditional methods today.

LASKEY

In many ways, they are about the only houses that are available to lower- or middle-income people who cannot possibly afford the cost of a new house.

ALEXANDER

Okay.

LASKEY

I wanted to ask you before we move on to the next section, did your political stand, especially in the late forties, hurt you particularly in your private practice?

ALEXANDER

Well, it probably did. But people forget about that. In any event, I got along, and that's all I wanted to. I mean, I wanted to do what I wanted to do by myself.

LASKEY

Well, you had made the statement-- I think this is 1945, when you had decided to return to architecture after leaving Lockheed. You said you had determined to turn down any commission in which a predetermined form or style was demanded. Why did you come to that conclusion?

ALEXANDER

Well, I wasn't--at least I don't think I was-- trying to be a Howard Roark, but that ideal of individualism did affect me. I think I talked before about Ayn Rand, didn't I?

LASKEY

No, but I was just about to say, speaking of Howard Roark, you might talk about your meeting with Frank Lloyd Wright and with Ayn Rand.

ALEXANDER

Well, I believe The Fountainhead must have come out about 1936 or '8, somewhere in there. I was back in New York in 1938 working on Parkchester at a time when it was on the newsstands and when The Fountainhead was in drugstores and office girls would buy it, principally for the rape scene, I understood. Well, I came back here to California and was living in Baldwin Hills Village during the war.

LASKEY

Let's see, '49 is when you ran into Frank Lloyd Wright.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, but I was thinking about-- I saw Rand first. I heard that Rand lived in Los Angeles and found out that she lived on Tampa Boulevard. It turned out that she lived in a house designed by [Richard J.] Neutra for Sternberg, [Josef] von Sternberg. Did I talk about this before?

LASKEY

No.

ALEXANDER

Well, I called her on the telephone, cold turkey, no introduction, just said I wanted to see her.

LASKEY

Had you read The Fountainhead?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

And did you know her politics?

ALEXANDER

Well, if you call it politics. Her philosophy.

LASKEY

Her philosophy.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, I didn't connect it as much with politics. But I knew that the book had caused in me a real disturbance; that is, I was trying to make up my mind at that time, partly as a result of reading that book. I admired the concept of The Fountainhead: that individualism was one of my ideals. I also could not abide the thought of the anarchy in Howard Roark, in having designed a housing project, having it changed in design without his consent, and then blowing it up. She was obviously opposed to any social action to solve problems and in favor of individual actions only. And I was torn between the two in making my own philosophy. That's the reason I looked her up. I went to her house several times and had her to dinner at Baldwin Hills Village a couple of times. She became very interested in me and in trying to get me to make up my mind on her side, you see. We'd have arguments late into the night. One of them, the final argument, she was talking about how a private post would handle the mail much better than a public post and private fire companies like the volunteer fire company that Benjamin Franklin established would do the job better than a public one.

1.15. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 4, 1986

ALEXANDER

A private organization might very well do a better job on most of the things she was mentioning, but when she said all roads should be private, she lost me. [She said] every road should be a toll road. Well, I had been to India, where there were toll stations in between several separate states (most of those separate states are collected now into larger states), but it was a ridiculous concept and I didn't want any part of it. And then I also found that her solutions for pressing social and economic problems that I could see really would not solve those problems, as I saw it. So I came down on the side of her enemies . Much later-- That was during the war. And then about, I think it was 1949, there was a national convention of the AIA [American Institute of Architects] in Houston. I was one of the delegates, and before the delegates left we were treated to a preview of the movie The Fountainhead at Hancock Hall at USC [University of Southern California] . We all, I think the very next day, hopped on a train and went to Houston by train--that was the thing to do in those days--past the Chocolate Mountains and so forth. And this happened to be the convention at which Frank Lloyd Wright was to get the gold medal. That was the reason for having given us the preview of The Fountainhead. Well, I met him on several occasions during the convention. I was with a group of Texans whom I had met for the first time--three of them became very good friends of mine over a period of time after that. We were standing at a cocktail party when Frank came in. He had his usual cloak and was being introduced to people. Several times he was asked, "May I get you a cocktail, Mr. Wright?" And he would say, "No, I was born intoxicated and I do not need alcohol." And nevertheless, he did have human characteristics, which I soon found when a young Texan came rushing back from the men's room and he said, "You know what happened, I peed right next to Frank Lloyd Wright." [laughter] Well, anyway, Wright's address was electrifying. I mean, I enjoyed it and liked his plain speaking and his references to "Houston there and the Shamrock" --that was the hotel-- "here, and in between the streets and on the streets the gutters and in the gutters the people." And his discussion, as usual-- Not only his discussion of the brick. I'd heard that one before. He spoke at USC once and I heard him, and I'd thought, "Well, this guy's a poet, he's not an architect." I learned later he was an architect for sure.

LASKEY

And a poet.

ALEXANDER

Well, on the way home on the train I was sitting next to John Rex, and John said, "You know, Frank Lloyd Wright got on the train, the same train." I said, "Well, let's see if we can get an interview." So we sent a card by a porter asking Mr. Wright if he would see us. The news came back, surprisingly, "Why sure. Come on down." So we went through the rocking train to Frank's place. We sat across from him, and he talked scathingly about this [Richard J.] Neutra in California. Well, I had actually worked with Neutra by 1949, so evidently, I guess that was for my benefit.

LASKEY

He knew you were working with Neutra.

ALEXANDER

He must have, yeah.

LASKEY

Well, Frank Lloyd Wright was not a great admirer of--

ALEXANDER

Oh, no.

LASKEY

--the modern movement.

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

He didn't like Le Corbusier.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, Wright said, "And as for Corbusier, Corbusier is to an architect as the human heart is to a pump . " Well, anyway, he made his usual caustic remarks, this, that, and the other. It was a lot of fun. And we mentioned that just before we left we saw the movie The Fountainhead in a preview. He said, "That reminds me of a funny story. When they were working up their nerve to make the picture, people kept trying to get in touch with me. They'd go the most roundabout ways to get somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew me to get me to contact them. I just waited until finally a young man came from the movie studios to knock on my door. He came in--" [Wright] said, "Delighted to see you. What's going on?" "Well, we're making that movie The Fountainhead, and Ayn Rand says you were her hero" --she told me the same thing--"and we'd like to have you design the sets." And Frank said, "Well, that sounds like an interesting assignment. " "Well, Mr. Wright, what would your fee be?" Mr. Wright said, "Everybody knows my fee is 10 percent." And he [Wright] said, "I could see the young man calculating, 'Let's see. Those sets are going to cost maybe $150,000, $300,000, and 10 percent of that--'" "Oh, Mr. Wright, that sounds great." Mr. Wright said, "Maybe you didn't understand me. It's always, in the case of movies, 10 percent of the take." He said, "I never saw the young man again." [laughter]

LASKEY

That's too bad. It's sort of a missed opportunity, Frank Lloyd Wright not having designed the sets for The Fountainhead.

ALEXANDER

Maybe he didn't want his building blown up.

LASKEY

That's a real possibility. Did he ever admit in your conversations to being a model for Howard Roark?

ALEXANDER

Well, I think he knew it, oh sure, sure. Well, he said Ayn Rand had told him that. But I don't think he knew anything about it before. She had not met him until she sent him a copy of the book and he sent it back autographed with a note in front. She showed me the book. She had not been in direct contact with him before that.

LASKEY

When she was writing the book, she wasn't in touch with him?

ALEXANDER

She had been born in Saint Petersburg Square and saw the Kerensky rebellion, the victims in their coffins being carried in front of her house in a torchlight parade, and then she escaped from Russia. She had gone to college and became a visitor guide for the USSR. She became disgusted with the way socialism was working there and got out of the country and came to Long Island and decided that she had to write a book explaining her point of view and explaining socialism and its terrible consequences. And she consciously selected architecture as being the profession which is intimately tied with the economy and society of its time, unlike the writing of a book or the writing of music as a composer or painting a painting or developing a sculpture. The architect had a client; he was bound by economics and so forth. So she consciously picked the subject of architecture to illustrate her points. In order to get the lingo of the architectural profession, even though she had no training in architecture at all, she got a job in an architect's office in Manhattan. I think it was [Cyrus L.] Eidlitz. I'm not sure. But in any event, she got a job in an architect's office. It was not as a typist, or maybe it was. Well, she did odd jobs in the office, and it made it possible for her to write about the profession with some credibility, as if she knew what she was talking about. But she was a terrible witch. She wore the pants in the family. She had married a pansy of a-- Well, I call him a pansy, a very effeminate actor, who when he came to dinner wore a blue sort of sailor jacket with gold buttons. Well, it looked like an unlikely match.

LASKEY

I'm sure it was. When you met her at the [Josef] von Sternberg House, you weren't involved with Neutra then. This was--

ALEXANDER

No, this was during the war.

LASKEY

What was your reaction to the house? It was a very modern house. It's sort of a streamlined modern.

ALEXANDER

I don't like that much austerity. It had an aluminum wall around the swimming pool with a curve at the end, as I recall it. It was very mechanical, and it had what looked like an automobile headlight at the foot of the stairs. It was a solid banister railing and plaster, and in the plaster there was this thing like an automobile headlight. It was a thirties, Neutra, International-style house. Well, it was certainly typical of its kind. A good example.

LASKEY

It was very typical of what the modernists were doing here in the thirties. Well, you were president of the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission in 1948. Were you still president at the time that you left?

ALEXANDER

No, not when I resigned.

LASKEY

And you resigned to go to India. How did you get involved in India?

ALEXANDER

Okay, a Marie Buck had, twenty- three years before, married a Mr. Buck who had just graduated from the Springfield YMCA [Young Men's Christian Association] college, and his dream was to go to India to represent the YMCA in setting up recreation facilities, especially for the young men of India. His name was Crow Buck. She had been born in Derby, Kansas, incidentally. She had gone to India with him on their honeymoon expecting to come back within a year. But he got over there and became so fascinated that he wrote a letter back to the YMCA headquarters asking for support for his dream to stay there and work out these vast programs for the Indian youth, and he was turned down. He found that there had been athletic events sponsored by the British, for which they had put up silver cups and gold cups and god knows what, and all of these awards had been placed in vaults in various banks. And he asked these groups of young men who, as organizations, owned these things, "If we get them out and sell them and I make you wooden replicas, carved wooden replicas of these things, which we wouldn't have to put in the vault, we could start a college here. Wouldn't you like to do that?" So they all agreed to do that, and this was the beginning of an effort to establish a YMCA college in Madras, India. And that's where the Bucks stayed the rest of their lives. Crow Buck died, either immediately at the conclusion of the war or prior to the end of the war. Marie Buck was a little gal with the greatest energy I ever ran into in a little person--she was probably not more than five feet tall. A wonderful, exciting individual. A group of companies that they knew very well asked her to head a welfare effort on their behalf for their employees. Now, this group of companies, called Simpson's-- No, the group of companies was called Amalgamations, Ltd. You can imagine-- I mean, it was a conglomeration. But it had started as Simpson's, a company that had built carriages for the young British sports who came to India in the earliest days. Clive and Calcutta and all over India. They built these sport carriages and eventually built wagons and trucks, and they got into transportation. Then they bought a book publishing company. They printed little inexpensive books to be sold in the newsstands of all the railroad stations in British railways in India. When they found that they needed a lot of paint for the wagons and so forth, they had developed a paint company. And then they were interested in automobiles--I guess it was the Morris car--and then they imported the parts and assembled them there. The new Indian liberated government had a policy to work out the manufacture so that one by one this company, which got started simply assembling the Morris car, would, part by part, develop the facilities to manufacture the entire thing eventually. But at first it was simply piston rings, and then they'd manufacture piston rings until they didn't have to import any more, and then they would have piston rings for other manufacturers, and so forth. And their long-range goal was to develop automobile manufacture in India completely. Then Marie started by setting up a clinic. The clinic took care of cuts and bruises and god knows what, the sicknesses of the men. And the objective, from the company standpoint, was to keep the men healthy and keep them on the job and as productive as possible. She had a family day once a week when they could have their ladies come in with all kinds of-- childbirth and god knows what problems. So then finally Marie came to the conclusion that there was no way she could improve the health and well-being of these people without treating their entire lives, and this would mean--the way she saw it-- establishing an entirely new life-style. At that time there were over four thousand villages in the state of Madras, which is a lot of little pepper villages, little teeny-weeny, sort of joint family, ten families, that sort of thing. And they were losing faith in the agriculture in their little villages, which were falling apart, and they were attracted by the reports of wages and so forth in the city. So this was coming in out of a civilization over thousands of years old--where the support system had been built into this society--into an entirely new environment, socially, economically, and physically, where it was just disastrous. They might only be living in a grass shack in the country, but that was better than being crowded three families to a room in some slum in the city. And also, in the little village everybody in the family had something to do. The women and the little kids worked in the rice paddy, or whatever. In the city they were removed from that and they had no social security, which they had in the little village, a built-in social security. So she convinced the owners of Amalgamations, Ltd. , to develop a welfare fund, putting 6 percent of their earnings--I don't know what it was, a percentage of their earnings--into a welfare fund that would start-- The first thing was to buy land adjacent to Madras and make that a place for these employees to live and where they could grow some vegetables and improve their housing and food. So as part of the effort, they started to buy land, and they had their eyes on a vast area that extended ten or twelve miles south of the city along the Buckingham Canal, which every monsoon had tidal bores coming up the canal and inundating this area. Therefore it had never been used very much because it was subject to flooding. She expected there was a way to stop that and to reclaim the land. And of course because of their inheritance rules, every piece of land in this area would be owned by maybe thirteen families scattered from hell to breakfast. Nevertheless, they had been doing a magnificent job in assembling the ownership to this marsh called Pallikkaranai swamp. It was called Pallikkaranai because that means "the place where the Paliva kings had their heads cut off." The place was overrun by Mohammedans for six hundred years, and then the British came in for two hundred years and it was a semblance of its former self. I had maps that showed the remains of sort of catchment basins that had been at one time tended by every little village to retain the water that came with the monsoon. These had all been let go to pot, because under the British administration, everything was centralized, and you were to look to the public works administration, an Indian public works administration, but this is not the same as the village being responsible. So the whole system had fallen apart, and she visualized putting it back together again somehow. She came to the United States looking for an expert in planning who might help them plan this demonstration; it had assumed some national importance. You couldn't get a rupee out of the country. Therefore she had to get outside help, to get someone to come in. She had an idea that maybe she could get UN [United Nations] help on something like this. Okay, so she came over and she interviewed Neutra and various other people. She had a niece who lived in Baldwin Hills Village. She went to visit her niece and she looked around and said, "Oh, my goodness, what's this?" and came to see me. And she soon decided that I was the person she wanted, and we went together to the UN, which was out on Long Island at Flushing, it was at Lake Success. We met with the appropriate people in the cultural-- What do you call it? The social and economic division of the UN and also the agricultural division, because we had to get one other expert, she figured, who was an expert in land reclamation, and we got their support. They wouldn't recommend approval of this project; they would simply provide traveling money. So there was no great gain in this thing. And they approved my engagement. I got to know the architects there at the time and--

LASKEY

At the UN?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, they would have been--

LASKEY

[Oscar] Niemeyer?

ALEXANDER

No, no. That's another story. These were the young characters from Massachusetts who were in the social and economic division interested in state planning and architecture and design and so on. Well, anyway, I then went with her in search of the agricultural expert, and we found him on Swan Island outside of Seattle, Carl Kohler, who was an expert in soil reclamation. We arranged everything so that he preceded me. He found a strain of long-grained rice that would thrive in brackish water. He was an engineer and figured ways to avoid this annual flood and ways to drain the swamp, which would be necessary. And then I was to follow him. I had works in progress at Orange Coast College, and I left Bob [Robert] Pierce in charge of the office. I asked Mayor [Fletcher] Bowron about the planning commission. He said, "Well, I'd like to have you stay on, but the city charter provides that if a commissioner is absent from the city for more than a month, he has to get permission from the city council to retain his position. So why don't you go to the city council." Of course, when I went to the city council they cheered my leaving. So in January of 1951 I left and stopped at-- Well, this was at a time when the Boeing Stratocruisers were used by Pan Am, and they flew twice a week across the Pacific. One could stay at any place three days without a visa. So every time they stopped I stayed for three days to see the place. I saw Hawaii for the first time, and I had introductions wherever I went. An Indian named Wattamul had founded a department store and then a series of branches, the Wattamul Department Store, I think it was, in Hawaii. He had married a Vassar [College] gal who was interested in the welfare of India and the relationship between India and the United States. She persuaded him to set up the Wattamul Foundation, which supported an exchange of students and this, that, and the other. I had introductions to that crew. I went out to see the University [of Hawaii] library, where they had received a shipment from China of rare volumes from Peking, just escaping the revolution. I went on to Japan--this was 1951--where I saw my classmates. At the time I was at Cornell [University] in architecture, there were no less than six architectural students from Tokyo. Three or four of them were still surviving. Two of them were very close friends of mine [whom] I've seen many times since.

LASKEY

Wasn't that unusual?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

In 1925.

ALEXANDER

Well, in 1923 there was one hell of an earthquake in Tokyo. I mean, there was a devastating earthquake. It just leveled the city. At that point the father of my best friend there sent him to the United States, first to go to prep school, where he could learn the English language, and then to Cornell, where he could study architecture. I don't know the intimate stories of the others going there, but his going there was on account of the earthquake.

LASKEY

That's interesting, because I think in 1924 restricted immigration legislation was put into effect in this country specifically to keep Asians out. So that must have been a very touchy time.

ALEXANDER

Could be.

LASKEY

Probably very difficult for the students themselves. Anyway, that's very interesting.

ALEXANDER

Well, that was a very exciting three days there. Just before I left, one night they had taken me to a new nightclub to show how their society and customs had been degraded by the war. And then the final night they took me to, in contrast, an old-style geisha house, where we danced country dances and where I played one of their little phony guitars and we sang Cornell songs and had a hell of a good time.

LASKEY

In Japanese?

ALEXANDER

No. We tried to teach [the songs to] the gals. Well, anyway, as I was getting in the cab on the way to the airport, my friend Shigeo came and said, "You must see our classmate in Bangkok when you get there." I said, "Well, you better put [his name] down here." So he wrote it down in my little notebook. Well, we came into Okinawa, one of the two places on earth forbidden on our passports--the reason being that Okinawa was being used as the base for our B-17 bombers in the Korean War. We lost an engine on the way into the airport, and the nearest engine in the world to replace it was in Hong Kong harbor on a ship. And it was a Sunday, so we were going to have to be there for three days or so. I don't think I should tell you the whole story. But let's go on--just this one about getting to Bangkok. We then went to Hong Kong and had some adventures there and went on to Bangkok. And at the Oriental Hotel, I spoke to the young man at the desk, who spoke some broken English, and I explained that I wanted to see this man. Since I had it in writing, I showed him the name, and he said, "Yes, I know that man. I will get you a meeting with him tomorrow morning . " So he arranged a meeting. We got a taxicab and we went barreling out along these clongs and into the slums and turned a corner, and all of a sudden we came to a great, enormous palisade fence of teak, great ponderous teak doors, the gates to this place. And the taximan honked the horn, the doors groaned open, we went up under a porte cochere. I asked the taximan to wait. I knocked at the door, the door opened, a little Siamese girl had a little china tray for me to put my card on. I had had cards made for the UN mission to India. She closed the door and then opened it again and invited me to come in and wait for my host. Pretty soon I saw my host coming down the stairs--there was an open balustrade, so I could see. He was wearing something like pantaloons, that is to say a purple sarong, and when he came down further, I saw he had this white and gold embroidered vest with cloisonne buttons, and he was obviously not one of my classmates. So he came over and I said, "I made a mistake." And he said, "That's okay. What are you doing?" I told him. "Have you seen the palace?" I said, "No, I just got here last night." He said, "You must see the palace, and I'd like to show you through. " I said, "Don't bother with that. I'm just a tourist. " He said, "That's okay. My office is down there. I'd be glad to show you through." I said, "Okay, if your office is there." So I asked what time and I made arrangements, and I said, "By the way, I'm on my way to India, as I told you. And today, I understand, is India Home Rule Day, and I have been invited by the Indian embassy to come to their reception." He said, "That's fine. My wife and I will be there too. I'll see you there." So I then went to an appointment I had for lunch with a newspaper publisher, the most prominent publisher in Bangkok. And I noted that the couch in which I sat had several pillows, and each pillow had symbolic five umbrellas, stacked one above the other, as if it were a tree. I remarked about it, and my host was very proud to say, "I'll tell you what that means. Because the kings in the past have had so many concubines, they've had so many offspring that almost everybody in Thailand is a prince, so they have to make some distinction. Actually, nine umbrellas is only used on one occasion. That is the coronation of a new king. The king is entitled to seven." He identified each one down to five. He said, "Five, that's pretty darn high, you know." So I was very proud to go to the Indian reception with these people after lunch, my five-umbrella friends. So we're standing in the reception line, waiting to be received, and I noticed my friend from the morning up at the head of the line. So I said, "Excuse me just a moment." I went up and said, "Hi, glad to see you. You said you'd be here and that I'd see you." I came back and my hostess said, "My god, where did you meet him?" I said, "Oh, I met him by mistake this morning. I was at his house and we did this and that." I said, "He said he's going to take me through the palace tomorrow. He said his office is down there." She said, "Do you know who he is?" I said, "No. He just said his office is in the palace, and I'm going to meet him tomorrow morning." She said, "He's the king regent. The king is sixteen years old and he's in Switzerland at school, and his uncle is acting king. And he's the guy-- Of course his office is at the palace." [laughter]

LASKEY

The palace is his office.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right.

LASKEY

Well, how did your friend give you his name?

ALEXANDER

Well, it was a mistake on the part of the desk clerk at the hotel. The names were very, very similar. As soon as I told the king regent the next morning the mistake and how it happened, he said, "Oh yes, I know that guy. He went to Cornell and he's an entomologist, and he's very important to our agriculture here. I'll get you in touch with him." So he put me in touch with the guy, and I went to a play that night with these two characters.

LASKEY

Did you get the tour of the palace?

ALEXANDER

Oh, sure. Another thing, the palace is really a large compound containing many buildings, several temples, and that sort of thing. The king regent had explained to me that he was going to have to include another couple besides me and he hoped I wouldn't mind. I said, "Not at all. Who are they?" He said, "The president of the Sydney, Australia, Rotary Club is here with his wife, and I'm taking them through. You know," he said, "I'm president of the Bangkok Rotary Club." [laughter]

LASKEY

Do they have Tuesday morning meetings?

ALEXANDER

I don't know.

LASKEY

Did you get to see the famous Thailand shadow puppets?

ALEXANDER

Oh, no. I couldn't explain myself properly. What I saw was probably something I'll never see again, which was a series of skits or plays that were not the kind I had expected that you're talking about. But I did go to a dance in which I danced with these lissome maidens whose hands-- They can fold their fingers back so they can almost touch their wrists. The dance was called the ramwon. It was sort of a country dance. It was fun. I also went to-- Well, this has nothing to do with architecture--the hell with it. But to get on to India. I stopped in Calcutta, where I landed in India, and proceeded to--

1.16. TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 4, 1986

ALEXANDER

I mentioned arriving at Calcutta simply to contrast it with south India. Calcutta, as was the case in Hong Kong, had been invaded by millions of refugees after the war. In this case they were from Bangladesh. And so the entire so-called infrastructure, the sewers and water supply and so forth, were strained way beyond their capacity. The population had doubled overnight, and people were dying on the sidewalks and sleeping overnight all over the place. It was a miserable place. Everything was gray, colorless, and dull. There were some exciting monuments, of course, of the old days of Clive, but in general it was a sick city. I flew from there to Madras in south India, where suddenly everything was gay and delightful and colorful: every bullock would have one horn painted vermilion and the other green and would sport a bell that was jingling along. And every time I'd turn a corner I'd hear a flute, somebody playing inside of a window. The sounds and the color and the laughter, in spite of misery, was in stark contrast to north India. And I was to be there three months. The very first thing that happened was that I was taken to the office of the president of Amalgamations, Ltd., who had already ordered a tailor to be there, who measured me. I was amazed, because I'd brought clothing. I soon found out why. The next morning I had six pair of white ducks and six shirts, and from then on I could walk anyplace in the city without fear of being accosted by urchins begging or by beggars in general. I was assumed to be just simply-- I couldn't see the difference in the cut of the clothes. There was a difference, and it was discernible, and I was suddenly a native. I'd obviously been there years, and it was fruitless to try to attack me. Whereas if I'd worn my regular clothing, I would have been tagged as a European immediately and would have been deluged (and I saw people just being hounded to death). If I were going there today for a similar mission, I would have found a way to live in Indian style with-- Well, today I could stay with my friend Sarma, an Indian architect, who was the one I selected to work with me. I had interviews with several who were British. This was the only Indian-trained and Indian architect who had stars in his eyes for everything American, starting with the Revolutionary War and on. This was at a time when the United States could have been hero to the world, and we proceeded to squander our values right and left. For instance, as I went through Bangkok I found that I would not be permitted to see Angkor Wat--which I would like to have seen--because of the war there. I then found that while the United States had just given $2 million to the UN, we had given $2 billion to France to support their colonial control over Indochina, including Vietnam. We were the heroes of the world because of our revolutionary past, and we threw this position away, ever since then. Well, anyway, where were we back at the ranch?

LASKEY

You're in Madras, You have just arrived.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, I got proper clothing, I selected an architect-- Oh, I was going to say that today I would try to live with people. However uncomfortable, I would like to sort of participate in their lives--instead of which, it had been prearranged that I would have the maximum comfort and protection. In other words, I was to live in a mansion that was leased by an American oil company. The head representative of this oil company had it as his residence. It had been built by the East India Company as a summer residence for their employees. It was an enormous masonry house surrounded by a great big compound, high walls, great flowering trees. To protect my health, every single morning I received two large bottles of spring water that Marie Buck would bring around, guaranteed to be safe. Otherwise, I was said to be subject to all types of diseases from unboiled water. I had contracted something that put me in the hospital at Calcutta, presumably from eating six-inch- diameter shrimp in Bangkok. But I never did find out what that was. I had a recurrence on my way home. Anyway, it was a disease that the doctors at the clinic could not figure out. Well, Marie was quite an institution. She had gotten the company to buy a farm, quite a bit outside of town, that had gone to pot. And she was developing this into a place to raise seed for the future dream that she had--it was a seed farm. It had lacked sufficient water, so that she had found an ancient well. A well in that part of India was usually a cylindrical hole in the ground, thirty or forty feet across. And this thing had a stone lining and stones cantilevered out to form steps from the bottom to the top.

LASKEY

Of the well?

ALEXANDER

Of the well. It was dry, but she was working on making it productive. So she had gone to the library and gotten a book on Welsh coal mining that described how you blast rock. She had bought dynamite. She would carry these crates of dynamite down to the farm by putting them in her jeep. She'd sit on the dynamite on this bumpy road on the way down to the farm. [laughter] What a gall. And then nobody else would dare touch the stuff--I guess she wouldn't let them light it. She would set the stuff the way that the book had said, and she'd set the fuse and light it and come running up these stairs. Everyone was to lie down on the ground behind some barrier, and she would join you, and then it would go off with a great crash. Rocks would fly in the air. It was wild. She managed to get more water out of it, though it wasn't really sufficient. Among other things, I noticed that she was a nut on green-manure farming. None of this chemical fertilizer business. That is, you raise something--in this country it would be something like vetch, or something like that-- which you would plow under when it grew. You wouldn't use it for itself, you'd use it for enriching the soil. And she showed me one stand--I suppose it was not more than an acre--of the most luxurious stuff. It looked more or less like a field of corn very closely grown together. I didn't recognize what it was. It was six to eight feet tall, luxuriant. I said, "What's that?" She said, "That's green manure. We're going to plow it under." She told me what it was. It was san hemp. And only thirty, forty years later did I discover that san hemp was one of the finest marijuana plants you could get.

LASKEY

I see.

ALEXANDER

So that was the green manure there. Well, anyway, I purposely spent a lot of time soaking up the culture. Every village around the city would have its sort of patron saint, its little temple, and a particular weekend when they would have their fiesta, you might call it. So there was a fiesta going on any weekend, if you knew where the village was that was having one. Marie would tip me off where to go, and I'd be rushing off. She had, of course, engaged for me a driver, and his name was Ganesha. In other words, he was named after the elephant god that removes all obstacles, and this would be good for our enterprise. She had all of the rigmarole of fortunate days, auspicious days, auspicious hours. She'd say, "Oh, look, it's twelve o'clock," and something just happened. "This is the day for so and so. " and it would happen . She had also engaged for me a bearer. I said, "Marie, what the hell am I going to do with a bearer?" "Well, he's going to hold your hands." I said, "I don't want him." She said, "It will be misunderstood. If you don't hire as many people as you can put to work, you're a very mean man. It's the custom for you to have at least a bearer and a driver." That's what I had. She'd call in the morning and say, "Such and such a temple is taking their gods down to the sea in a ceremony this morning. Go down to the beach." So I kept my driver, and we barreled down to the beach. And I got to know a lot about what was going on. Then Marie and I took a long drive with our driver, a trip through Bangalore, the Nilgiris, and the mountains far to the west, the Eastern Gahts, I guess they call them, and to the south almost to Travancore, then to Pondicherry, and so forth. She had listed just about every place where we could find workers being housed in large groups, such as the Carnatic Mills, fabric mills in Bangalore, and the Kolar gold mines and a place where a big dam was being built. Any place where we could find housing for workers, to see what was actually being done and what was considered disgusting by ourselves or the workers or whatever, or what's popular with them. And as we went, I made little sketches of the plans. When we got back, I told Sarma, the Indian architect with whom I was working, that I wanted to have models made of all of these little houses or dwellings. He had several employees, at least a dozen. He had a puja [place for worship offerings to Hindu deities] in the office. Every morning they bowed before this little alcove and in effect prayed for good fortune and for an auspicious day. And I said, "Let's distribute these [plans] to the employees and have them work on making little models. They can make them out of cardboard." And Sarma said, "I'm sorry, but that won't work." And I said, "Why won't it work?" And he said, "Well, see, I'm a Brahman and every one of my employees is a Brahman. One of the few professions or one of the few occupations that is available to a Brahman is architecture. Any kind of clerical work is perfectly all right, but you don't infringe on somebody else's occupation that is available to him. And for a Brahman to draw a house is all right--that ' s clerical. But to make a model, that is labor. That really belongs to another caste." And he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do." He said, "You and I will start making models of the house, and we won't say anything to the employees, but they will see what we're doing, and we'll see what happens. We'll leave the plans around." So the next morning they brought these little models in that they had made. They couldn't do it in front of another Brahman. They could do it in the privacy of their own bedroom. They could produce this thing and they wouldn't have to say who had made it or anything like that--there it was. I used these little models to conduct a series of meetings with workers who were brought together by the union to get some reaction. Meantime, for the first two months I didn't do any real planning of what the concept would be. I was just trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, all of a sudden, I was galvanized to action by I don't know what. I just came to a point where I felt I had an idea that would make a real contribution in concept. And that was instead of having a suburb of Madras, which Marie had visualized, a suburb of 50,000, which I figured would get us right back into the same old slot as the city-- This was to be a suburb of 50,000 and a place for them to go and engage in agricultural work to the extent that they were not employed in the factories, the members of the family that were not. So instead, I devised a system of ten villages, each starting out at 2,500 population, eventually expanding possibly to 5,000, and they would be separated by agricultural land to grow rice. Each village would have a role in the total complex so the total complex might work as a city. A central village in this complex of ten would be designated the assembly plant, we'll say, from a manufacturing standpoint, whereas each of the other nine would have its little sub-assembly contribution to make to the total. Another different one would have its high school and eventually a college, whereas each of the other nine would have its elementary school. There would be also a central health village. Each of the villages would have a clinic visited, perhaps daily, by a nurse in a jeep from the central area, where there ' d be a hospital. There wouldn't be twelve hospitals or ten hospitals, there 'd just be one.

LASKEY

Well, how large was the area on which these ten villages would be placed? How big an area are we talking about?

ALEXANDER

I don't recall the acreage and that sort of thing, but it's big enough so that not too dense a village would be separated by more than a mile from the center of the next village. Villages would be more than a mile on center and would have agricultural land in between them. And each village would be 2,500 population to start, 5,000 maximum. Each cottage or each dwelling accommodation would have a little private garden next to it for their personal use and a communal place to go to raise rice, which would be for everybody. So that each village would have its little bazaar, or a place where you go to shop, but once a week you go to the tandy, which is the central village where you get an exchange. It's not only commercial, it's social. Everybody wants to go. They go trekking in their bullock carts, take the things to exchange for other things, things to sell or buy, but mainly to gossip. So I called this the rural city, looking at the thing as a whole as a city. It was to be a staging area between the people who were living in their little villages out in the sticks who were then coming into this teeming city. Between those two stages there would be this stage where you were half- country and half-city. So we had to get into materials and that sort of thing. On the way over I had read a UN publication regarding the use of a machine that had been developed in Rhodesia with which one could make cement blocks. It looked like a foolproof thing. It was useful in a primitive area. So I asked about this the minute I got there, if we could get one of these things. Well, they didn't know: it's kind of hard to go to Rhodesia to get it, and so on and so forth. It wasn't until I was almost all ready to leave when I saw an ad for one of these things in the paper, and the companies for which I was working were selling them. Well, I just used the wrong nomenclature. I think I called it a cement block machine, you know, an earth-cement block machine, and I used "block" instead of "brick" or something like that. Anyway, they got one out of the warehouse right away and got it out to the site. So we started to make these things, and Sarma, this Brahman who wasn't supposed to get his pinkies wet, got right into the mud with me. He was really terrific--he still is really terrific.

LASKEY

Is he still in India?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, he had three daughters, each of whom married an Indian who had aspirations to go to the United States--they ' re all living in the United States now. His wife's brother [Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar] is a famous Nobel Prize winner in astronomy at the University of Chicago. He's just retired. He has a room named after him and so on. They're whizzes, you know. Well, so we went out to the site and we made blocks. This is soil cement, as it's called, with a small amount of cement and laterite soil, which was on the site.

LASKEY

What is that?

ALEXANDER

Well, it ' s a soil that results from-- I couldn't tell you what it is, to tell you the truth. I mean, I've forgotten. But it results from having had a tropical forest on the land and having leached something out of it. I had seen pictures of laterite soil, and there are a lot of hard nodules that are on the surface of the land. I noticed these, and then I got into dealing with what it was and found somebody at the university who knew what it was. Sure enough, it was what they had used in Rhodesia to mix with a small amount of cement, instead of cement and gravel. It made stable blocks. I had them tested, and they're not very strong--but they're a hell of a lot better than plain old mud.

LASKEY

What is the climate of Madras? Is it relatively like Los Angeies?

ALEXANDER

Well, once a year, if they have a successful monsoon, what we call the summertime is unbearable. An enormous amount of water. Of course, when I was there the monsoon had failed three years in succession, causing a drought and causing widespread hunger and some starvation, mainly because of the lack of a distribution system. I mean, in the city itself I saw no signs of hunger; I'd go outside the city into a little hamlet, and it was pitiful. The United States was sending vast quantities of grain over there for a price. You know, we hear about our magnanimous gestures in saving these starving people just for money. But they were buying large quantities of grain from the U.S., larger quantities from Thailand and Burma. There was a Russian ship that came into the harbor one day. Our Senate was debating whether to let them have any grain or not, and a Russian ship came in with rice that they were very proud of. They showed the long grains, and the quality of the stuff was high. And it was a gift, not what you buy. Well, anyway, of course they have an idea in India that when a senator makes headlines, it must be the policy of the United States, but we know damn well it's just a senator popping off.

LASKEY

Making headlines.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Another strange thing about their own situation there: For two hundred years, they would identify a need and somebody would write back to London, and if it were pressing enough the need would be answered. So they had this two hundred years of history of getting up and making a speech in their parliament and having something happen. And, at least when I was there-- and I think a lot of it still exists--somebody would get up in the parliament and make a speech about a new aluminum factory. And then they would all brush their hands and say, "Well, that's done now. What will we do next?" And nothing would happen. This change from the traditional individual village responsibility to keep the road in shape and keep the little catchment basins in shape, to the centralized authority where they depended on the public works department to do this, that, and the other--that had converted this place partly into swamp, this Pallikkaranai swamp. Incidentally, that was right in the shadow of Saint Thomas Mount, where Saint Thomas the Apostle is buried. And when I went through Pondicherry, they had just had a flood that had revealed Roman wine jars and coins of the time of Christ--Roman trade with Pondicherry in the south of India.

LASKEY

That was exciting.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

Well, given this kind of horrendous weather, would the bricks you were making withstand erosion?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, well, compared to adobe and that sort of thing. So we built a sample model house and I made plans in general. I planned one village as a sample and had the total overall plan. [I] got approvals from various ministries [and] from the company. And then there was an organizational plan. The whole idea was that this would be built by this group of companies over a period of time and that it was for their employees. If somebody left their employ, what are they going to do? Are they going to turn them out or what? And who's going to run the villages? Who is going to determine the policy? Well, we devised the theory of a plan in which the administration would start out completely company owned and company run, and in prescribed periods of time the management and ownership and operation of the whole thing would be converted to a largely occupant-owned-and-run operation. Yet there was a provision--I forget just how it worked--that would keep occupancy available to families with at least one person working in one of the companies. Otherwise, it would become like everything else in India, all squalid. Well, we started out with these experimental or demonstration houses, demonstration rice crop, and so on. The plan was shown to the board of public works, and they said, "That's fine. You build it and we'll own it." And the company said, "No, that's not the idea." And the department of agriculture wanted their cooperation. They said, "That's a great idea. You build it and we'll own it." The labor unions said the same thing. This went on. Nobody got together on how it was going to be owned and operated. So finally the company said, "To hell with it. We just can't handle it. We can't get any agreement. If the government is going to take it over, forget it." I didn't hear about it again until years later when I was speaking to some people in Great Britain about it, and, yes, they had heard of it and it had some influence on how housing was being treated there and in other parts of the country. But it never came about as a full-blown experiment, as I had hoped, for demonstration.

LASKEY

That's very sad. But it's rather amazing that the company hadn't attended to that or hadn't realized in advance that this was going to happen.

ALEXANDER

Well, this was entirely new of course.

LASKEY

Was this the expectation in India? That anything that was built would automatically be taken over by the government?

ALEXANDER

Well, everything was new. I mean, 1947 was home rule I think, wasn't it?

LASKEY

I don't know.

ALEXANDER

I think so.

LASKEY

So they weren't used to governing at all?

ALEXANDER

Well, there was a transition. This was four years after independence. Where were we four years after our independence? Nowhere at all. It took twelve years to get anywhere with the constitution. The country was being run by the ICS men, that is to say, Indians who had been trained in the Indian civil service. They were brilliant individuals, and they've all died by now, I believe. But nobody had any experience of what to expect, and so nothing happened. Except I was told it was influential later--I don't know.

LASKEY

How long were you there?

ALEXANDER

Three months there, and then I spent another month traveling around the world. I found that it cost ten dollars less to go around the world than to go there and back over the Pacific.

LASKEY

How did you do that? Just the plane fare works out that way?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. The round-trip to Madras, in either direction, was ten dollars more than the round-trip around the world. So I came back through Bombay and Egypt and Greece .

LASKEY

When you came back, did you regret at all having severed your ties with the planning commission?

ALEXANDER

Oh no, I don't think so. No, I didn't. That was six years, really. That's enough. Almost six years.

LASKEY

So when you came back, about that same time you were involved in Guam.

ALEXANDER

No, shortly after that.

LASKEY

Oh, shortly after that.

ALEXANDER

Yes. Having been to India for the UN actually was instrumental in the first place in hearing anything about the Guam situation and then in being selected.

LASKEY

That was another frustrating experience.

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 4, 1986

LASKEY

Shortly before your trip to India, and while you were still with the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission, you had your first engagement with Richard [J.] Neutra.

ALEXANDER

Right. I think it was 1948. One evening when I was at home I received a call from him. I'd never known him well at all. I had not particularly liked his architectural results. I could see how they were innovative and new and exciting, but my own bent was not in the same formal direction. He called me at home and said that he had just had a call that day from the planning director of the city of Sacramento, who was interested in having a study made of the old Sutter subdivision in the central part of Sacramento, which included skid row and areas that were dilapidated and needed to be redeveloped. And the objective of the study would be to demonstrate the need for a redevelopment agency and a need for the city to carry out the purposes of the [Community] Redevelopment Act. He had just returned from Puerto Rico, where he had had a great experience, I think, in designing schools and so forth for Rexford [G.] Tugwell.

LASKEY

Oh, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt's person.

ALEXANDER

And he had also had a heart attack while he was there .

LASKEY

In Puerto Rico?

ALEXANDER

Yes. And he said to me on the telephone when he called that night, "You know, I've had a heart attack and I don't think I can handle it. Would you be interested?" I said, "Why, certainly I would." And he said, "Well, here's the name of the director of planning and here's his telephone number, and he will expect a call from you . " So the next day when I went to the office I called the guy, and he said, "Sure, I know you're interested in planning, and I know your former position. How soon can you come up to visit with us in Sacramento?" I said, "Next Friday's free. I'll be up then." He said, "Fine." I made arrangements. And in fact, I called the airline and made a reservation. That night Neutra called me again at home, and said, "How did it go? Did you call him?" "Yeah," I said, "sure, I called him." "Well, what happened?" "Well, I'm going up there. I'm flying up on Friday to have a first meeting." He said, "Well, you know, my doctor says I can't fly." And I said, "For heaven's sake, I thought you said you weren't interested and couldn't handle it." He said, "Well, I would like to be involved if you would like to handle it." I said, "Okay." He said, "But you know I can't fly." I said, "Okay, I suppose we can go by train. I haven't traveled in a train in twenty years, but we can take a crack at it." So I got an upper and a lower--an upper for me, of course--and we went up by train. And we were met at the train by a couple of young fellows from the planning department of Sacramento. They put us in the car and said, "Well, let's first go to the city hall, and we'll see some maps of the area that we're talking about." Instead of which, as we were passing through skid row on the way to city hall, Neutra said, "Stop the car!" So he stopped the car. He said, "May we get out?" "Surely." So he and I got out, and he said, "Let's see what this place is like. " So we went to a flophouse, on the side of which was a sign: "Cots forty cents a night, mats twenty cents." And there was a sort of marquee at the entrance, as if it had been a movie house, with a guy in there who was in charge of seeing people going in and coming out. When we asked, he said, "Surely you can go up and see what it is like." These wide stairs, at least six feet wide, had signs on a couple of risers to the steps saying, "No girls upstairs, please." So we went up and took a look around, and each space for a cot or a mat was separated from another space by an orange crate on end, which, in other words, meant that the man had three shelves, one at the floor, one at midrange, and one at the top, where he kept his belongings-- nothing could be locked up. There was central plumbing and so forth. And then we went over and we found a cheap apartment for a single family. We walked around and we found a place where one could check his suitcase or any kind of a bundle he had for five cents a night. We found a barbershop which was a "barber college, " of course in quotes, where you could get a haircut for ten cents. The whole thing was designed to take care of what we had heard about and what the people that took us there in the automobile, the employees of the department, said were migrant farmworkers. We had heard of it through Carey McWilliams's writings, and we expected to find migrant farmworkers, instead of which, on inquiry, we found that virtually all of the "bums" in the flophouse were old-age pensioners. The entire complexion of the place had changed to permanent residence, for the most part. Not migrant farmworkers, but a place that offered very cheap rent and the very least cost of living for people who had fixed and very low incomes . Well, the whole attitude that Neutra showed on that occasion grabbed me--that is, the idea of not looking at maps first, but looking at the people. I later came to the conclusion that he had done this consciously. In any event, I also, at a very much later date, came to believe that one factor in his calling me to get me engaged in this thing with him was that when he had been at Puerto Rico and the war was just over, several young firebrands, including me, had been interested in getting some entirely different leadership for the AIA [American Institute of Architects] chapter. As usually happens, most of the people interested in running for office over a period of years--and I think it's true--are not generally the most vital forces in architectural design. We had our little meeting, Whit [Whitney R. ] Smith and Sy [Simon] Eisner and I don't know who else. Several of us young squirts were interested in changing this, and we came to the conclusion that we would nominate Neutra, even though he was not there. We would guarantee in our nomination to perform the chores necessary for the office, but we wanted a leader of the organization who would command respect and renown in the community and way beyond the community. And Neutra was the best one we could think of who was a member of the chapter. And I think possibly my advocacy and nomination of him at that time may have had something to do with his turning to me. But it wasn't until many years later that that occurred to me, in fact long after I had become disassociated with him.

LASKEY

You hadn't worked with him prior to this in any capacity?

ALEXANDER

No. Not in any capacity. In fact, on one occasion when he was a speaker at a small meeting in Pasadena, I had taken exception to his point of view regarding architecture and had somewhat of a minidebate with him. Perfectly friendly, but opposing the sparse-- The lack of design decoration, you might say, and that sort of thing.

LASKEY

How would you have described your architecture at this time?

ALEXANDER

Oh, in the forties. Well, I was just trying to make up my mind. I had developed certain objectives during the war when I was not actively engaged. I think it was to put people first, people who were going to occupy and use the architecture, to make things useful for them, make things work, you might say. And I mentioned before wanting to become engaged in spiritual architecture and also high- tech architecture and wanting to involve fine arts directly in architecture and not as something you buy and stick on it. Well, I wanted the form of architecture, to the extent that I was interested in form, to be sensual and not dry and inert. I appreciated the decorative forms that I had seen in my three months in Europe in the summer of 1930. And I did not want to lose that grace. I'd like a few curves to go along with the straight lines, in other words.

LASKEY

So the functional sparseness of the International style was not one you would have chosen for yourself.

ALEXANDER

Right, and also I would say that I considered architecture, from my standpoint, not to be an object to be looked at as the most important thing. It was not an object. It was spaces to be experienced, to uplift a person's spirit, to make him feel better about his surroundings from within. Well, anyway, we found that Harold [F.] Wise had been selected by the city council to work on the non-architectural parts, demonstrating the need for redevelopment of this area. And I had gotten to know him pretty well when he was just mustered out of the marines after World War II and was living in the Quonset huts that the city put up in part of Griffith Park.

LASKEY

Griffith Park?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, in the flatland at the base of Griffith Park. This was a temporary thing. And he had worked along with me on statewide housing. Proposition 14. It was probably he who suggested to the planning director getting in touch with Neutra. Then Neutra brought me into it, and the three of us were finally under contract to develop this plan on what to do about the central Sutter subdivision. So we got to know the city pretty well by walking that area, which was not too big to conceive. It was easy to walk around and see the charming streets of Victorian houses, three stories high, with the ground floor, once used as servants' quarters, now used for low-rent housing-- the main floor of every house being a full-story height above the land that was annually flooded at one time, before the levees went in. The Sacramento River annually overflowed its banks and made the ground floor uninhabitable. That was a typical physical scene. The demographic scene was studied in a survey that Wise made and showed that every block was multiracial, every block in this Sutter subdivision. It was not homogeneous black or Chicano. We found within the area the only mosque in North America at that time; a Buddhist temple, which was still serving its original population, quite a few members of which had become well-off and had moved away from the center of the city, but still came there for services; a Philippine mission; and in fact something that catered to every wave of low-cost workers that had come into the San Joaquin Valley to help the farmers raise crops, including railroad building and so on. There was a Japanese element, a Chinese element, but they weren't sectioned off. There were these institutions that were designed, but you would find the people mixed together in every block, according to this demographic survey . We found that the layout of the Sutter subdivision was very uneconomical from the standpoint of percentage of land devoted to streets, and we showed that by combining blocks we could recover a great deal of useful land. We recommended a great many things, such as the redevelopment of the riverfront--which has still not taken place as we envisioned it. But many of the things we have recommended have taken place twenty, thirty years later. And this is one trouble that I found with my attempts at city planning (which constituted perhaps about 10 percent of my practice): that things that we found and would recommend doing to improve the city life, in whatever little town it might be, didn't happen for a generation after we recommended them. They might eventually come through, but I didn't want to wait that long for satisfaction. Well, in any event, we published a report looking ahead ten years, making recommendations by inference. It included many illustrations of the reasons or the signs that would show that this area, for the most part, was subject to redevelopment legally. It would qualify as a blighted area. And this was used to convince the council, and the council appointed themselves a redevelopment agency. Of course we were no longer involved, and we were several hundred miles removed from the scene while the redevelopment took place. Then after they had a redevelopment agency and a staff, a couple of years later I think, Joe [Joseph T.] Bill--who later came to Los Angeles in redevelopment--was the redevelopment agency director. And he engaged us to come back a second time and make additional studies. Neutra looked on this, especially the second go-around, as an opportunity to revive his "Rush City Reformed. "

LASKEY

Oh, okay.

ALEXANDER

Which he had envisioned years before. So we got in a lot of sketches of high-rise things that I think were inappropriate for the place, but nevertheless it was fun to work in. Well, I thought after finishing our little report, in which I used the technique of Looking Backward to write the report--

LASKEY

The technique of the [Edward] Bellamy book?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. That is, I wrote a letter dated ten years ahead. I wrote it to "Dear Richard" about what I found in Sacramento ten years later. I wanted something that would be read and would be for popular reading in Sacramento, rather than a thick, dry report. And this worked. Well, I thought after I finished the report that was the last I would see of Mr. Neutra, except I would see him at meetings occasionally and so on. Instead of which, to my amazement and that of everybody else in the local chapter, [Harry S.] Truman's housing bill was passed by Congress. They didn't think it was possible. All of a sudden, here was a whole wad of public housing that was going to be built all around the country, with 10,000 units allocated to Los Angeles. Recalling the previous FDR housing days, when one objective was to spread the work among architects-- The federal government had required three or more architects to group together for each project, so that they would employ as many as possible. And rather than seek a big project, where such a thing would be mandatory, when [Howard L. ] Holtzendorff asked me what I would like-- And obviously I was in line, having supported the program and having stood out as about the only architect who had spoken in favor of it. He was quite friendly to my being employed. I told him, having looked at the series of projects that was laid out, "I just want that little one out there at Pacoima to house the Chicano population in the area of the olive groves. I think it's small enough so I can do it myself, and that's what I would rather do, [rather] than be involved in a big job with a lot of other architects." He chewed on that for some time and then called me one day and asked me to come to the Jonathan Club, and at lunch he said, "The apple of my eye is the Chavez Ravine project. " And I said, "Well, that's a great big job." He said, "Just so you know, I want you to handle it. but you've got to have an architect collaborate with you who has more prestige than you have nationally and internationally. " I said, "Well, I have a pretty good name nationally. " He said, "Well, you've got to get a big name." I said, "I don't want that big a job in the first place. " He said, "Well, I want you to do it. I don't trust it with anybody else. And I like what you've done with Baldwin Hills Village. " and so on and so on and so on. Okay. So he said, "Come on down to the office." And in the boardroom there was a table loaded with brochures from architects. I had not submitted one, but just practically every architect in the chapter had put in a brochure. So I waded through these things. When it came to Neutra, I said, "Well, I have worked with this guy and he has prestige." And he said, "Oh, yeah, that's a good one. That would probably sell. I could sell you and Neutra to the board. " So I called Neutra and asked him if he would work with me on it. He said, "Oh, I'd be delighted." So we were selected to handle this thing in Chavez Ravine, which started out ambitious enough. Then they increased the number of units until there were 3,350 units, about a third of the total 10,000-unit program on this site, which was an interesting site. But my god, when you get that many, you've got to get into high rises, unless you're going to have a rabbit warren. In any event, we signed a contract on this thing. It took some time to get it going, to get input from Washington, part of which was this increase in the numbers, the density. People in Washington, in the housing game, were inclined to think in terms of New York and Philadelphia and Boston, instead of Los Angeles; they still couldn't conceive of what Los Angeles was about. So we were given a project which inherently could have been a disaster when and if built, and I'm glad personally that it never was built. What we developed, I think, could have been as great a disaster as [Pruitt] Igoe.

LASKEY

Pruitt Igoe in Saint Louis.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Maybe not. It was out in the country. But in order to accommodate this mass of units, we had to include nineteen thirteen-story buildings.

LASKEY

What was the site like? You might talk about what Chavez Ravine was in 1950.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was a ravine and a series of subsidiary canyons that came into the ravine. It was a high-class slum area. That is, if you were from Brooklyn or Manhattan you might not conceive of it as a slum, because it was all one-story shacks, but it was packing cases, people living in old chicken coops. It was squalor of the worst kind. But, you know, children growing up in that area must have had an enchanted life, in a way. I mean, they were surrounded by Elysian Park. Their ravine itself had not very many trees in it, but it was country living, as if it were a little place in Mexico. It wasn't all that bad from the standpoint of living conditions. From the standpoint of sanitation and so on, not too hot. The housing was not the greatest. There was no toilet or bathtub in every unit, you know. The housing criteria devised by the census bureau to define whether the housing was safe and sanitary, as they say, don't tell the whole story. In a way it was an idyllic situation, in spite of its squalor.

LASKEY

The people who lived there were a rather close- knit community.

ALEXANDER

That's right. There was nothing they could do with this steamroller of a federal program.

LASKEY

Well, who determined that it should be developed in the first place? Why was that area picked?

ALEXANDER

Well, after all, Drayton Bryant and I picked it in our illustration of what redevelopment could do.

LASKEY

So your book Rebuilding the City: [A Study of Redevelopment Problems in Los Angeles] predated this development .

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. We had no idea that we would be involved in any way in it. We were looking at the redevelopment of Bunker Hill as being desirable. But what do you do with those poor people? Well, we looked at a nearby--walking distance--area of Chavez Ravine, which had relatively low density, very few people living there compared to the acreage, and figured, "Well, that's a good place to take the poor people on Bunker Hill and put them with additional poor people in better-quality housing."

LASKEY

Oh, I see. I hadn't realized that Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine had originally been part of a whole.

ALEXANDER

Well, in our minds. They were so close together. And we didn't think in terms of what actually happened. Most of the people from Bunker Hill voluntarily moved out to MacArthur Park. They call it now--

LASKEY

Westlake Park?

ALEXANDER

Westlake Park. Well, anyway, we were stuck with a program which we tried to resist, but you know, there's no way to get around the federal government. And, in fact, even with the initial program, there were too many people that were to be put on that site. And as I say, the final design was, in a way, brutal. In order to accommodate this many people on that extremely hilly site, with the modern, contemporary concept that you have to have vehicular access to every dwelling-- You have to get a fire truck there for one thing.

LASKEY

Of course.

ALEXANDER

And you have automobiles, which influence street grades and so on. In the first place, it called for very high density in portions of the plan; that is to say, I think it was nineteen thirteen-story buildings, and then the rest two-story. And in order to accommodate this on that site, it meant a massive grading program. That meant creating a synthetic desert before you started to put in the utilities, the streets, the sidewalks, the landscaping, and so forth. Then eventually it would be quite a community. From one standpoint, it was a marvelous opportunity to attempt to build what has been called, since then, a "new town in town." That is, this was to be virtually a self-contained establishment with housing and a shopping center, a major one, and church facilities and so on. Everything but employment. Of course that's where it falls down, compared to the Ebenezer Howard ideal.

LASKEY

Of course, being in the city itself, employment is implied, right?

ALEXANDER

Yes. And of course a bus. You'd have to contemplate buses to take people to their places of employment. Well, anyway, this was exciting, and it wasn't evident to me during our work on it for a period of two years what a disaster it might have been. It is just in looking back on it now that I believe it would have been a disaster.

LASKEY

You mean humanwise, the dislocation of all those people and taking them from essentially a rustic community--

ALEXANDER

And putting them in thirteen--

LASKEY

Putting them in thirteen-story high rises.

ALEXANDER

Thirteen-story buildings, yeah. Compared to that, what we had recommended-- Well, that plan in the expanded book, a portion of which was not published, shows the type of living accommodations that we were able to devise at that time with a lower density. And it's still a pretty high density--I forget what it was. But we developed, oh, three- to five-story buildings, which in effect were low-rise. That is, you'd have a street access to a center floor, which would have single-family apartments on that first floor. Then you'd walk up one floor above that to a first floor of a two-story unit, with the living room at that second floor and the bedrooms on the third-floor level. And then you'd walk down one floor to a living room level of another two-story unit. So it was on a hillside with access to it in the center of this five-story unit. If you were an occupant, you'd never have to walk up or down more than one floor to your living room.

LASKEY

Well, that's an interesting concept.

ALEXANDER

Then, beyond that, you had a bedroom above or below you, depending on where you were in the five-story building. That kind of thing I had already worked out in this plan, but when it came to trying to get the density that they were talking about into it and to work with Neutra ' s concept, well, it turned out to be impossible. It was not a humanistic plan that we developed finally.

LASKEY

Now, Neutra was still working in the International style?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

How did the city or the state plan to deal with the people who were already living in Chavez Ravine, particularly those who were living in the small shacks that were indeed their homes? Would they have been able to even afford living in these buildings had they wanted to, or were they essentially being displaced?

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't recall now. I know that Holtzendorf f , the director of the public housing authority [Los Angeles City Housing Authority], was still on the board of the [Los Angeles City Community] Redevelopment Agency, and his agency was responsible for housing these people if they could not afford the housing that would be developed there. My recollection is that we had affordable housing for the people living on the site, through cooperation with the housing authority. But, ideally, it would follow the recommendations in this little book. What do you call it?

LASKEY

Rebuilding the City.

ALEXANDER

Rebuilding the City. In which you would have a wide range of economic groups living in the same site. Some of it would be subsidized public housing and some of it would not. The objective would not be to build Bunker Hill-type housing. I mean current Bunker Hill-type housing. The objective would be to house the people on the site, people from other sites too, and a variety of economic classes. I don't know how it would have worked, but I know that was the objective. Okay, while in the process, before we knew what was going on, of course the real estate lobby labeled the whole program communist, and they finally succeeded in getting two out of something like ten projects eliminated from the program. One was ours and one was Rose Hills, and those two together made up about five thousand units out of the ten thousand. There were still five thousand units that were actually built under that program and have been successful public housing projects.

LASKEY

Where were they built? Were those the ones down in East L.A.?

ALEXANDER

The entire Chavez Ravine project would be public housing, sure.

LASKEY

When you were working on Bunker Hill redevelopment, would that also have been public housing?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

That was not public housing.

ALEXANDER

No, no, no.

LASKEY

I know that when it was developed, it was not developed that way. So your original concept for the redevelopment of Bunker Hill was not that it would have been a public housing program, that it would have developed essentially the way it has developed, as a combination of things. But Elysian Park--

ALEXANDER

That was a public housing project. I forgot that--got so wound up here. [laughter] So it became the most prominent project in the public housing program in Los Angeles and, therefore, the most desirable from our enemies' standpoint to knock out. And they knocked out ours and Rose Hills. Their clinching victory came when [William F.] Knowland and [Richard M.] Nixon, senators at the time, put a rider on some appropriation bill that gave the city council the funds to purchase the site from the housing authority, both the Rose Hills site and the Elysian Park site. And that's what they did, and then of course the next step was to convert it into [Walter] O'Malley land. And they now had this great site right near the center of town, and Roz-- What's her name?

LASKEY

Oh, Roz [Rosalind] and Victor Wyman?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, she was the pet of the Dodgers, as I recall .

LASKEY

Roz Wyman was?

ALEXANDER

Wasn't she?

LASKEY

Oh, I don't remember. I was just new to the area then.

ALEXANDER

There was this lady on the city council-- I have nothing against her, and I don't resent whoever it was on the council. They were part of the movement of the time. They had this land now, and what were they going to do with it? They want the Dodgers; the Dodgers want Los Angeles (they wanted out of Brooklyn). Anyway, O'Malley got the site, and the regrading was fabulous. They knocked down the hills and filled in the valleys and made this great big place to park, enough cars to handle 50,000 people in the ballpark. That was the end of a two-year effort on our part. Most of our attention went into it. We had such people as Sy Eisner, who had been an architectural employee of the [Los Angeles] City Planning Department and before that, I believe, the [Los Angeles] County Regional Planning Commission. He was one of our employees. And my office staff came over. Bob [Robert] Kennard and other Bobs.

LASKEY

The Bobs. [laughter]

ALEXANDER

And Garrett Eckbo. We started out in Neutra's two-car garage behind his Silver Lake house. In the meantime, he was finishing work on what was to have been a real estate investment for him, which was something designed for a couple of shops on Glendale Boulevard, just half a block away from his Silver Lake house. This became a nightmare for me to try to run my office over at La Brea [Avenue] and supervise what was going on behind Silver Lake, and finally I said, "I'll just break up my spot here." This was at a time when I had just come back from a Guam trip and got hepatitis and found that I also had the eviction notice. I had spotted a piece of property on Mount Washington that was inexpensive and looked straight across the valley at Mount Wilson. It had this wonderful view and this rural atmosphere, and yet it was six miles from either the Pasadena or Los Angeles city hall. So I said, "Okay, I'll move the office over here." So he offered this storefront building as our joint office, and when that was finished we moved in there. It was plenty big, too big for just an architectural office, so we tried an integrated office of architects and structural engineers, [Arthur] Parker and [Jack] Zhender; and a mechanical engineer, Boris Lemos; and an electrical engineer, Swickert. And I don't think we got the landscape architects in there, but we had room for them. In any event, we had room to spread out and have an integrated force. Even though we did not employ these people, we had an arrangement that they could do work for any other architect, but they were not to go into a brochure with anyone but us, that is, as a joint force. And I had come to a point in the Orange Coast College work where I was notified that they were going to interview other architects as well as myself, the first time in several years of work from the very beginning. So on one occasion I asked Neutra how he'd like to go into that on a joint venture with me.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 4, 1986

ALEXANDER

Well, as a result of my question regarding Orange Coast College, we were then in two joint ventures at the time. We sort of drifted into a partnership. I don't know how many times over a period of ten years I would try to work out a partnership agreement and would always be frustrated in some way by Neutra ' s Germanic style of thinking, as I think of it. It was just impossible to come to an agreement with him which was simple and not so complicated that I could understand the darn thing. And I kept thinking, "What the hell. We're getting along all right now without a written partnership agreement. Let's not worry about it." Well, we went ahead with an unwritten understanding . The number one understanding was that he insisted that all of his single-family residential work would be his alone and carried out in his "studio," in quotes. In other words, in his residence. And that any other type of work we would do jointly. Well, he didn't stick to that, and over a period of time there were several instances where I was really disgusted to find that, without saying anything to me, he had broken this agreement, which was, I admit, an oral agreement, but nevertheless I considered it a real agreement. That was one bone of contention. In any event, we went on from essentially 1948 to 1958 on what was really a joint-venture basis, but we each signed any contract with a client. Do you want to discuss any other projects in that period?

LASKEY

Yeah, because I think a number of things that you did with Neutra were particularly noteworthy. You talked about Orange Coast College, the auditorium that you came up with.

ALEXANDER

That was the first Orange Coast College project we did in common, and from then on, any Orange Coast College project we did together. In fact, anything that I did from then on up to 1958, I did in connection with him. There may be some exception toward the end, where I did some consulting. I know there was for some consulting work, but as far as an architectural project was concerned, that was it. The speech arts building at Orange Coast College was the first one, and that was the one where they were going to interview other architects. But when they interviewed me on that occasion, I had Neutra with me, and that changed their idea that they were going to seek other architects. In the design of that he pulled out all the stops that he had been dreaming about, I guess for years, of staging affairs. In many ways and on many occasions, he was a joy to work with, as long as he was what I could call himself, as long as he was not putting on an act. He found it irresistible when a six-year-old came into the room--he just had to put on an act for that six-year-old, let alone a ninety-year-old general of the army. On one occasion on the way to Guam in the airplane, we had nineteen hours to spare, so what the hell, we might as well talk, and that was always fascinating. But on the way to Guam on our first trip there, he said, "When we get there, I want you to act as the business person and I'll act as the artist." I said, "What the hell do you mean? I'm going to act as myself." He couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand him on this subject, and this happened time after time where he wanted to put on an act. I found that to be phony, and in many cases it was perceived as phony by the potential client. But the stories that he told about his experiences in the First World War on the Dalmatian Coast-- his old-world habits or ways-- For instance, we're walking along the street, each of us with his wife, and due to the old American custom, coming from pioneer days, we know that the street's going to be muddy and there are carriages splashing along there and the clopping hooves of horses are going to splash mud on our lady's garment, so we always go on the street side. He always goes on the right side, because that's the side on which he carried his sword, or maybe the left side--

LASKEY

Left side.

ALEXANDER

That's right. He always walks on the left side, wherever the hell the street is. Well, I heard a great deal about the early days in Vienna. I did not hear about what I've heard since. I did not hear what must have been heartbreaking for him, and that was the discrimination against Jews in Vienna. He described, of course from his own standpoint, his working with [Erich] Mendelsohn, going to his office, and then corresponding with-- What's his name, in Southern California?

LASKEY

[Rudolph] Schindler.

ALEXANDER

Schindler. And coming to America, going to Chicago, and stopping there. And his admiration for Frank Lloyd Wright, and especially the way Wright had succeeded in getting international publicity. Well, I soon found that Neutra had, in effect, five females working for him around the clock to make him internationally famous. I mean, he had his wife, who was a marvelous character, Dione [Niedermann Neutra] ; and her sister, [Regula Niedermann] Thorston [Fybel]; and three hired secretaries. Literally, he would sleep most of the time. He would take long naps. When he woke up in the morning--it might be ten o'clock or something like that--Mrs. Neutra would, in as near thunderous tones as possible, say for everybody in the studio, "Mr. Neutra is awake." And then all the little apprentices would take their little boards of drawings up to him while he was lying in his bed for him to make his written comments and marks on them.

LASKEY

Was this because of the heart attack or because--?

ALEXANDER

Well, he used that heart attack all the time I knew him, for ten years. He used it blatantly and consciously. One day when we were designing the [Los Angeles County] Hall of Records, we found that-- Well, in the first place, I think I ought to talk about the Hall of Records. That's an important thing we did together.

LASKEY

Together, okay.

ALEXANDER

He was on a trip to the East somewhere, while I was guarding the store at home. We had, before he left, gone into a letter of intent with Pereira and Luckman to joint venture this hall of records job and sent our joint letter of interest and our credentials into the [Los Angeles County] Board of Supervisors, requesting that we be considered for that job, that specific job. And [William] Pereira had gotten the cooperation of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton from Chicago, a management consulting firm, as part of our team. I was watching the papers and listening to what was going to happen. We had gone down and we had seen our favorite supervisor, who, of course, was John Anson Ford--great guy. And suddenly one day, quite unexpectedly (I was told about how it happened afterwards). one of the supervisors said, "I think it is time for us to choose architects for the hall of records. It's a big prestige job, and I appoint so-and-so." The next supervisor said the same thing, appointing somebody else; the next one said the same; and this went down until the fifth supervisor, Kenny [Kenneth] Hahn. Kenny Hahn said, "I appoint--" And they said, "Wait a minute, Kenny. You've had the last three jobs," or two jobs or whatever it was. "You don't get anybody in on this one." So here were four supervisors appointing four guys who hadn't talked to each other, knocking our heads together. Well, I called Bill Pereira right away and said, "I didn't do it, we didn't do it. We didn't know anything about this." And he said, "We know this. It's just too bad. I'm sorry for you guys."

LASKEY

Just to ask you a question here, were Pereira and [Charles] Luckman together at this point?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes.

LASKEY

I knew that they were at one time, but I didn't know--

ALEXANDER

Well, Luckman couldn't have been together with anybody. I mean, he'd have to be together with somebody as an architect to start out. He had an architectural degree, but he had never practiced and he was new to the Southern California scene. So he came out and went to his old classmate Pereira, and he had enough business contacts to make it attractive. Anyway, Bill was very understanding . Neutra came back with a great glow of excitement. Well, the only people that we knew in these three other characters were [Douglas] Honnold and [John] Rex, and I knew Honnold intimately and I knew Rex very well. This was fine. The other two-- Herman Light, I don't know whether I had ever heard of him. But we didn't know him. And [James R.] Friend of Long Beach was of course appointed by the Long Beach representative on the supervisors.

LASKEY

Were these essentially political appointments?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes, of course. And incidentally, at that time there was no question that the board of supervisors customarily took bribes from architects for jobs, and this is not unusual. John Anson Ford is probably the only exception in history who did not. Well, I don't know about that.

LASKEY

Kenny Hahn?

ALEXANDER

Well, Kenny Hahn is a slick friend of mine. I worked for him when he first became a councilman. I went out and rang a few doorbells for him. I was on the planning commission. I liked his cut, and he was a young, enthusiastic guy. Well, anyway, the architects selected got together and decided we couldn't function on every aspect of the job together. So the others agreed that we should be in charge of design. Both Neutra and I had made a name at that time in the design field, they agreed. Honnold and Rex were assigned to program the job. That is, the county didn't hand us the program. They said, "Here you have to go to the staff that's going to use the building and find out what they need."

LASKEY

So you had to even create your own program?

ALEXANDER

Right. These days we'd have to charge for it, but this was part of the game at the time. Herman Light took great pride in his specification writing and working drawings too. And [to] Friend, whom none of us knew, we said, "Well, maybe you can handle the construction services . " Well, it took a long time to get started on this, because I kept urging Neutra, "For god's sake, this is the greatest opportunity in your career for a big building, so design the thing, lay it out." Nothing would happen. And I remember one night coming back from Orange Coast College, after a board meeting down there with our engineers Parker and Zhender-- I found that they were wondering what's happening here. I said, "I'm waiting for Neutra to come up with the design." They said, "Well, you know it's been a couple of months. What's going on?" I said, "This is his greatest opportunity. I'll get my opportunities like that later." Finally I got fed up myself and I went down to the office on a weekend, and in two days I worked out what became the layout and plan of the thing. It was not, naturally, the whole working plan, but it was a plan based on the needs that had been identified by Honnold and Rex. We called a meeting of our group, and I had a series of sketches to show the genesis of this plan and the way it was developed. And they all approved. I got a letter from Honnold: "Thank god somebody's taking charge of getting this under way." Of course Neutra, in the process of developing the design and working drawings, got some of his trademarks on the thing in the way of colors and what he called spider legs and louvers and so on. Although the tall louvers on the southwest side were my idea. He was flabbergasted at the daring of the 120-foot high louvers that would operate.

LASKEY

They were controlled by the sun? The louvers?

ALEXANDER

They were controlled by an astronomic time clock that would, through the period of the year as the sun changed, change as to when it would be open. It was also controlled by an electric eye on the roof that would turn the louvers until they were straight out, perpendicular, in case it became a cloudy day. I mean not just one cloud passing over, but if it became a series of clouds passing over, a cloudy day, they would stand straight out. And another occasion in which they would stand straight out from the wall was in the danger of high wind. Anytime the wind exceeded certain knots or miles per hour, the whirligig or anemometer on the roof would tell it to come out to its vertical position, which was its most strong. Otherwise it might fly away. We got an engineer who had designed a lot of Disneyland gimmicks to work with us on making this work, and we had a creative structural engineer, much to the disgust of the structural engineers that had worked for me during my entire career-this was, I think, the one occasion when they didn't. We had to make accommodations; we had four architectural groups to talk with. So we had some of our men and some of our people and some of their people. Well, at some point pretty soon, we found that within our group of four we had a competing design going on. This guy Friend, in Long Beach, had gone down to the county architectural and engineering staff with a design that he had cooked up himself. It was not our agreed-upon design.

LASKEY

This was when you were in the process, when you had decided among you that you and Neutra would be in charge of the design. And while you're creating this design, he's created an alternate design.

ALEXANDER

Right, right. And without telling us. And he had gone down there to sell it to the staff. Well, this was really too much. It was only some time after that I looked up the guy's self-written biography in a book of architects' biographies, and I found that he was a disappointed designer from the start. He had never done anything that was truly noteworthy, but it was obvious from the things that he mentioned about his career that he considered himself an outstanding designer. That was all right, but this was a crazy thing to do. So we requested a meeting with Art [Arthur J.] Will, who was the CAO [chief administrative officer] of the county. And in Will's office, we showed Will what we had proposed, and we told him about the competing design coming in from one of our members. In the midst of describing this thing, Neutra put on a heart attack. Well, Art Will had had a heart attack himself fairly recently, and here goes Neutra on this heart attack, which I thought was real, but afterwards he said, "Did I do all right?" And it was not infrequent that he would use that heart problem to his advantage or refuse to go to a certain place or demand, "I must have my nurse with me." And "my nurse" turned out to be his wife. Which I understand, and that was great. She acted as his ambulatory secretary and she just went through hell, but she would call it wonderful. Although she very often would say to me, "Isn't he a terrible man?"-- laughing. But I had to agree. Well, let's see--

LASKEY

Well--

ALEXANDER

The Guam thing. Well, it was shortly after I came back from India that I went to Washington to a national housing convention. The National Housing and Planning Association, I think it was, of which I was a member. I met lots of colleagues there, guys that I had known in the AIA or met at these meetings. I had gotten to know very well the top leaders in the public housing game nationally, the ones who were in at the very beginning. I had been appointed by the national AIA to be the West Coast member of a five-member committee on housing and planning. The chairman for maybe five years or several years in which I was on it was Louis Justement of Washington, D.C., who had written a seminal book called New Cities for Old. And [Henry] Churchill of Philadelphia was on it and Albert Mayer of New York, let's see, and Jerry [Jerrold] Loebl of Chicago--those were the five. Jerry Loebl was not on the entire five or seven years or whatever when I was, but he was succeeded by someone, I forget who it was. Anyway, I knew the people in office, the appointees in the bureaucracy of housing and planning.

LASKEY

Was this as a result of your India experience, or was this a result of your AIA experience?

ALEXANDER

No. It was a combination of AIA and Chavez Ravine. This was a prominent project nationwide. It was the only what you might call comprehensive, "new town in town" experiment. So the people in Washington were very conscious of that. Okay, one of the people at the conference, a friend, said, "By the way, you should stand a chance of getting the Guam job." Guam had just become a territory. For fifty years it had been similar to a battleship run by the navy, ever since the Spanish-American War. Finally, at the end of the war the Guamanians were demanding some home rule. In view of the fact that they had been stalwart, valiant defenders of the United States and democracy during the invasion and recapture of the island, Congress had given them territorial status. So Truman had just appointed a governor; his name was Carlton Skinner. He had been Wall Street Journal representative in Washington, D.C. I became very interested. This was up my alley. It was an opportunity that I could see would be fascinating to develop a plan. The scuttlebutt was that Carlton Skinner had stars in his eyes about regional planning for the island and needed some architectural work and so on. I then found from somebody who knew the inside situation that a very close friend of Carlton Skinner was none other than Agronsky .

LASKEY

Martin Agronsky?

ALEXANDER

Martin Agronsky. So I got to see Martin Agronsky; I became a pest to Martin Agronsky. He was a very dear man, very likable. Very decent to a young, stupid whippersnapper like me. And as I say, over a period of time going back and forth to Washington, I called on him many times. But in any event, he gave me an inside view as to what Carlton was like and how to approach him, and maybe he even gave him some of my line that I had given him about Neutra and myself. Well, it turned out that Carlton Skinner was very much enamored of Neutra ' s publications and his books and so forth, and that he was very much interested in my background in planning in India and so on in connection with the UN [United Nations] . So we had a long telephone conversation, ten dollars a minute or whatever it was, in Guam, and we went over together. I think it was twenty- three hours from Los Angeles, stopping in Honolulu, getting to Guam at that time. And of course there was a date change just before you get there.

LASKEY

This is about 1952?

ALEXANDER

Yes, that was the start of it. Nineteen fifty- two and '53, I think, were the main years. Well, Skinner was very enthusiastic about this opportunity. He had in mind that over a period of his tenure there that he would change the economy from a beer and tin can and cigarette economy to a viable long-term civilian economy. That is, everything up to that time, as I say, had been just run as a battleship by the navy. And they had the utmost scorn for Guamanians. They said, "The guys won't work, so we have to import the Filipinos to do our jobs." As far as not working goes, I found, for instance, on one occasion when I stepped off the plane into a puddle of water waiting to greet people, some person getting off the plane was my bank manager from the Bank of America, the branch near Baldwin Hills Village. "What are you doing here?" "Well, I'm opening a new Bank of America branch here." I said, "How's it going?" Well, I got to know his operation. He said, "Why, these employees are the best, hardworking employees I've had in my experience at ten different branches." It turned out that these guys had been treated like dirt by the navy, and they had found all different ways to frustrate the navy, like speaking Chamorro. They were soldiering on purpose, as far as the navy was concerned. But when it came to a job where they could have some money and respect, they were just terrific. Furthermore, all the construction work on the island, of which there was a tremendous amount-- Like 30 million a month, was it? Anyway, it was big. I forget, it's been so many years. I've lost track of the cost index and everything else. But it was a tremendous continuing contract. Everything was being done on a change order. Brown Pacific Maxon, BPM, which was a joint venture of big construction firms from the United States, had originally had a contract with the navy to do construction work on Guam. Towards the end of that specific contract, there was more work to be done, so they said, "Let's make it simpler. Let's make it a change order." Everything was being done on cost plus a percentage (the percentage being the profit), and the more it cost, the higher the percentage. I mean, the same percentage would bring in more dollars if it was 10 percent of a million. The thing that might have cost a million, they made cost two million. Then on the next job they'd get that kind of a-- I think it was not cost plus percentage, it was cost plus a fixed fee. But the fixed fee was based on their previous experience of percentage. Do you get the idea in general?

LASKEY

I got the idea, yeah.

ALEXANDER

Okay, so we found that they would be building barracks, we'll say, of reinforced concrete, superb construction. No question about that. No question that it was going to fall down or anything like that. But to make it cost more, they would get a whole crew of Philippine workmen to holystone the whole building, to polish the outside concrete until it was just like marble. I mean, it was a wonderful way to increase the cost.

LASKEY

What did you call that? Holystone?

ALEXANDER

Well, you know what a holystone is on a ship. That is a pumice stone or whatever they use, a big piece of stone with which you scrub the decks. Well, in addition to making a master plan of the territory, or regional plan, we had the contracts to design a house for the governor, which would be called the Palasyo after the original governor's house, which had been destroyed by the retaking of the island by the navy. They'd just sat off in their ships and bombarded the hell out of Agaha, the capital city, until it was leveled. The Marine Corps general in charge after the landing had bulldozers push the rubble into a long peninsula that you can still see there. Well, anyway, that was one project. Then we were to design an elementary school for Agana, something like thirty classrooms, and two or three other schools. So we were interested in the construction cost. What can we say about it? I mean, here we are in the middle of nowhere, and we've got to get contractors, we've got to get materials, and so on. What do things cost here? Well, we found-- I don't know what it was now. Maybe it was $30 a square foot. This seemed outrageous to us. Nevertheless, we were apprehensive. What would we find if we actually put something out to bid? So we put this thirty-room school, Agana Elementary School, out to bid, and we got bids of $12.50 a square foot, like a third or something like that of what the navy was advising us would be the minimum cost. Well, I must admit, it wasn't up to navy standards as a building. But they were flabbergasted and embarrassed, and we were dirt. We were persona non grata on the island.

LASKEY

Because you blew their cover, so to speak?

ALEXANDER

Well, we got out bids. That's something that showed up there. I don't know. There were some navy people that were that way and others were not. But certainly Brown Pacific Maxim wanted to get us the hell out before anything blew up.

LASKEY

It hasn't changed much today, has it?

ALEXANDER

I started to say that Carlton Skinner-- Yes, it has changed a great deal. But Carlton Skinner dreamed of turning this economy around, so part of our mission, as he described it over a period of our working with him, would be a social and economic one to change the economy to a viable native economy. So, for instance, I had meetings with Del Monte cannery people to see if they would be interested if we got fisheries going. I got into what kind of fishing can you do here to get tuna, and I found that the Japanese long-line method has been most successful in the area. "Where could we get fishermen to do this? Would they come from Japan, which is close, only fifteen hundred miles away, or from San Diego, which is thousands of miles from there?" And "What will we do? We can't sell the tuna here. We have to can it and sell it. Would you be interested in setting up a cannery for tuna in Agafia harbor? What about pineapples? The sweetest pineapples I've ever tasted are here. Aren't you interested?" "Well, no. The thing of it is that we have found that we must have a pineapple that is tart and is about can size, so that our machine can take the core out and not lose too much pineapple when it cores the thing and skins it at the same time, and then we slice it and so on. And those sweet pineapples I know are delicious, but the public won't go for it, you see. We found that." [laughter] Well, anyway, our mission was to try to get things like that started, trying to get some real economy based on the natural resources there. I had several frustrating meetings back here with people, specific people invited, like the best economist I knew and the best sociologist and this, that, and the other. I tried to round up a team that would work on this problem with us. The first frustration was that Neutra would talk a big deal on this line, but he did not want any limelight taken away from him, I found out. Another thing, the real clincher was that it pretty soon became evident that the navy didn't want any part of this kind of activity, so they had Carlton Skinner called back on the carpet to Washington, D.C., and told him to lay off: "The navy does not want anymore additional civilian activity than they already have. So just forget it. They're doing fine just the way it is. Just lay off." So Carlton had to tell us, "Well, forget about that part of the program. We won't get any support on it, and we can't do it." Anyway, we did get the Agana school built, the Palasyo built, a little school down at Umatec right in front of the beach where Magellan landed (he was the first European to discover the island) and one other school, Interajan, something like that. Well, meantime we started to develop a regional plan. They had stars in their eyes about a major high school. And in preparation for that, we started to work on elements of an educational institution, in view of the fact that the island would be a focal point where people would come to high-school-level education from islands all over the Pacific, the trust territories. And we also had a change of administration. Truman didn't last forever, and [Dwight D.] Eisenhower came in. And as is the case in many cases we ran into, Guam was looked upon as a sort of Siberia to which you send people to which you have an obligation, but to get them out of the way more or less. One obligation [Dwight D.] Eisenhower had was to a lawyer in Seattle whose name I shall forget. I may have written it down.

LASKEY

Eldridge?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. The governor's house had been completed, and here's a new guy coming in who had nothing to do with the programming and with the thinking that went into the house, coming in to occupy it.

LASKEY

Now, the house was rather a departure for a residence of that kind, wasn't it?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, the problems that the governor of Guam would have-- we found firsthand on one occasion when we were there-- there was suddenly a telegram saying that Vice President [Alben W.] Barkley will land in Guam tomorrow or the next day, whenever it was, quite unexpected. The Vice President of the United States suddenly comes. Another thing, we were there for Liberation Day. On Liberation Day, that's a big celebration, and at least two thousand Guamanians expect to be invited to the governor ' s house for a bash. And what are you going to do with things like that? In the first place, we could see that we had to have sort of hotel accommodations. There was no hotel whatsoever on the island (a Quonset hut was where we stayed). There was nothing. So what are you going to do when the President of the United States comes here? You have to have a place to put him. What are you going to do when you have two thousand people to entertain at one sitting? In effect, we had to divide the program for the Palasyo into two things. One would be a thing for these state functions, and the other would be a modest, American, three-bedroom house for the governor. So the Palasyo was looked upon by some critics as being outlandishly extravagant--those were the people who did not understand about the state functions--but when you took a look at what the governor was to live in, it was very modest. Now, Skinner was there long enough to appreciate the fact that the climate on Guam, during seven months of the year at least, is quite delightful due to the trade wind. And if you can simply arrange things to capture that and to provide shade for your dwelling-- There are no insects to speak of. Lots of little lizards that have suction cups on their feet run around on the ceiling and catch what insects come in. The living there could be quite delightful, at least for a large part of the year, without air- conditioning. In fact, they had some air-conditioning in some places, like some attempts in some restaurants, which at that time were quite primitive. They'd have a navy-type air conditioner right outside that roared, and you go in and there would be a 20-degree drop in temperature. And changing from one to the other was really not healthy and was enervating. So Skinner said, "No air-conditioning. We're going to have louvers to get the shade properly oriented, and we're going to capture the trade winds, make life as pleasant as it can be. And when the really muggy tropical weather sets in, we'll endure it, the way everybody's done it here for centuries." That wasn't Eldridge's idea at all. He wanted everything glassed in.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE
OCTOBER 4, 1986

ALEXANDER

Eldridge fired us and said that our claim--for something like $80,000 I think it was--that they owed us was "without merit," in his words as a lawyer. I didn't understand what he was talking about in his letter, and we couldn't get any conversation with him or anything like that. I was very much incensed. I know damn well he owed us that according to our contract, but I understand his point of view, [although] for years I did not. I went back to Congress, I got the law changed. I found that the one who had written the organic act that made Guam a territory (an employee of the Senate) had neglected something, and he corrected it. I went back to two Congresses to try to get our claim honored and recognized and paid, because $80,000 is a lot of money.

LASKEY

Yes, it is.

ALEXANDER

And I never did succeed. But in the meantime- -

LASKEY

Did you ever get any part of it?

ALEXANDER

No, this guy was adamant.

LASKEY

Well, what was his basis?

ALEXANDER

Well, he claimed that we had two types of contracts at the same time. One on a percentage basis for designing the Palasyo, the schools, that sort of thing, and another one for the master plan or development plan for the territory, which was on a cost, out-of-pocket basis. And that these two types of contracts were in conflict, and we had done some work and billed him for it on the time basis that should have been left to be a part of a percentage basis at a later date. Well, he didn't understand the purpose of the work that we were doing regarding this high school. We didn't have a contract as yet to design a high school, but we were gathering information as to what are the people going to be interested in that are coming from Ponape or Truk or wherever. I had meetings with people in the [United States] Interior Department who were concerned. They wanted to know if he was claiming sovereign immunity, which they would try to fight. But in the final analysis, it got down to the point that we would have to get the Guam legislature to agree to be sued, and the Guam legislature, as you can imagine, didn't want any part of it. Well, that's beside the point. What I was going to say was what you were asking about, being excluded. At that time, and it's not true anymore, at that time even though Guamanians became citizens, one had to get not only his passport and visa, but he had to get a special approval from SINC PAC, which is the naval command of the Pacific. You had to get the navy's approval at the highest level to be admitted to the island, unless you were a native of the island or something like that or a military person. So every time we'd go to the island, we'd have to get SINC PAC approval, and the new governor made it impossible.

LASKEY

So it was a political hostility.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. It also had to do -- We couldn't get our lawyer there, for instance. In other words, it was partly protecting his ass from being sued. We couldn't get permission to go on the island.

LASKEY

Was he that upset by what you did?

ALEXANDER

I've been on the island twice since then, but in recent years, you see. Well, he was an ornery son of a bitch. If we could have gotten together to talk things over, I think we could have found a basis of understanding, mutual understanding. But under the circumstances it was impossible. Well--

LASKEY

Well, so you had India and Guam and Chavez Ravine. Essentially, these same things have happened. How do you deal with that frustration?

ALEXANDER

Well, it's all part of the game, I guess. Those are not the only ones. In the case of Guam, we had the satisfaction of getting some actual construction built and people enjoying it. And as long as [Carlton] Skinner was there, we had our stout defender. Unfortunately, he, along with the stars in his eyes, he needed practical guidance, which he got from his public works director, who was an old-time navy man--a young man, but navy. And we worked things out. As long as he was there, everything was great. As soon as this other political guy came in, a fund-raiser for Eisenhower in the Northwest, he just cut us off without a chance to talk to him, just correspondence saying, "Your claim is without merit." And then try to get back to talk to him, no way. No further correspondence answered. Well, let's see, I mentioned- -

LASKEY

Well, just the nuts and bolts of how you operated during the Neutra-Alexander years, because you had your office in Mount Washington.

ALEXANDER

No, no, no, no. Baldwin Hills Village, I had my office there.

LASKEY

Hadn't you moved to Mount Washington?

ALEXANDER

No, I moved my office to Mount Washington but made a residence of it. From then on, I had only one office, which was Neutra and Alexander.

LASKEY

And that was the one on Glendale.

ALEXANDER

That's the one on Glendale Boulevard.

LASKEY

So Mount Washington was just your residence.

ALEXANDER

That's right.

LASKEY

It wasn't also your office.

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

You were operating out of the Glendale Boulevard office. [Richard J.] Neutra was moving between the two [his home and studio in Silver Lake and the office on Glendale Boulevard] .

ALEXANDER

Right, he came over almost every afternoon. In the morning, whenever he woke up, he would have drawings mounted on cardboard delivered to him at his bedside and would make notes and so on, which we would get back. He was a very much better detail man than I am, and he also tried to convert things to images that would identify him as the designer.

LASKEY

Did that bother you?

ALEXANDER

Well, at the time I didn't notice it. I wanted to get things done, and sometimes it was almost impossible to get things done. It took a tremendous amount of energy to deal with his wordy communiques and to get his approval of correspondence--what was important and what should go. I would be damned interested in getting something out, and it would take forever sometimes. It would drive me up the walls to try to work things out to his satisfaction and to mine and to the client's.

LASKEY

Who dealt with the clients generally? Would you be in that position because you were actually in the office, or did you generally go together in making contacts with clients?

ALEXANDER

Well, in making the contacts with the clients, in making a presentation, we usually went together. In many cases work simply came to us out of the blue: we would be working like crazy to get attention to us on a certain project that we knew about in which we'd like to be engaged, and then all of a sudden we'd get sandbagged by somebody we never thought of who would like to have us do something. And it wasn't necessarily all on his part. It was part his and part my contacts that brought the work in. I was handling all of the balancing act it took to keep the office operating financially, economically successfully. For instance, I would know damn well in advance if we took a certain particular type of work, in which he would be intimately involved, it would mess things up and we would lose money. Then I would have to scurry around and get something like a military-housing project, where I knew we could make money without too much interference from him, to make up the difference. I didn't have anybody in the office assigned to watching the payroll and so forth.

LASKEY

You didn't have?

ALEXANDER

No, no. So I was always on the lookout for cash flow, so that we always had enough money for payroll. If I could foresee that we were going to lose money on something, then I would get something to compensate for it. As far as dealing with the client after being selected is concerned, in many cases we were dealing with bureaucracies of one kind or another, and they simply- wanted things to be handled in such a way that it didn't cause too much fuss. And I had always worked on the basis, and did continue in my own practice, to have several associates who were not partners, but who were in most cases licensed architects and who had the ability to deal with people. In almost everything that came out of either Neutra and Alexander or my own practice, in most cases I developed the concept and basic plan of the building, the concept of the building, and then after getting approval of that from the client, I would turn the whole schmear over to one of the associates to be in charge of correspondence with the client, of getting out the working drawings and specifications, of seeing that the construction services were delivered. So that I had maybe five such people in the office.

LASKEY

They were regularly in your office as part of the staff?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

Would this include your staff of Bob [Robert] Pierce--?

ALEXANDER

Yes, Bob Pierce would be one of these. Robert Clark was another: he came recommended by one of my schoolmates at Cornell University who practiced in Mobile, Alabama. This guy came from near Atlanta, Peach Tree or something like that. Bob Clark, wonderful guy. He is still in practice and he has his own practice now, but he stuck with me from the earliest Neutra and Alexander days through the conclusion of my practice. Another one-- When we were working on Orange Coast College and when I set up a joint office with Neutra, Al Boeke was put in charge, for instance, of the speech arts building that involved the auditorium, the theater, the music facilities, and so on at Orange Coast College. He was project architect on that. And he was enamored of the idea that had been promoted by the German architect, the Bauhaus architect who was at Yale [University], Gropius. The idea was that he could work intimately with the builder. He left the office to go work in such a fashion with a builder in the San Fernando Valley, and went from there to Honolulu, where he became the head architect for Hawaiian Pineapple. And they set him up in charge of staking out real estate investments along the West Coast. He was the one who set up Sea Ranch, for instance.

LASKEY

Sea Ranch for Charles [W.] Moore?

ALEXANDER

Yes. Now, Boeke was not the architect of it. He was the representative of the Hawaiian company that purchased the land and financed the development.

LASKEY

How interesting.

ALEXANDER

He was the guy who selected the architects.

LASKEY

I know he wasn't the architect.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, but he's responsible for the concept and selecting the architects who could carry it out. He initiated several projects for-- I forget what the firm is called, the Hawaiian firm. It's related to Hawaiian Pineapple. Anyway, he was one; over a period of time there have been several. The last one in my career was Ernie [Ernest H.] Elwood. And Adolfo Miralles. They've all become very good friends and are practicing on their own.

LASKEY

There is one member of your staff that I wanted to ask you about, and this seems to be a good time. This is Sy [Simon] Eisner, whom you've mentioned several times.

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

I think he was somewhat of a firebrand.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, very much so in advocating city planning. Then of course, he became very knowledgeable in the history of city planning and in teaching courses in city planning. I admired his work when he was on the staff of the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission and I was on the commission. I believe he put together the [Los Angeles] City Planning Department's annual report for six or eight years, and they were distinctly better than any other department report for the city planning department or any other department in the city for years. I liked his social attitude. We saw eye to eye on most everything. I have a lot of admiration for him, and I think it's mutual.

LASKEY

So did he function in this capacity?

ALEXANDER

Well, the only time that he worked for us was on Chavez Ravine.

LASKEY

Oh, that was just on Chavez Ravine.

ALEXANDER

Yes, as far as I know.

LASKEY

He wasn't an ongoing member of the Neutra-Alexander staff.

ALEXANDER

No, that's right. I don't know just how it came about, but he was attracted by planning ventures of one kind or another. He is very articulate, but I believe his main forte and love is city planning as such. I became disabused of something that would take twenty years to come to recognizable fruition. It was all right when I was younger, but-- [laughter]

LASKEY

So essentially, then, you were in the Glendale office; you were overseeing most of the operations.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right.

LASKEY

You turned out a number of projects that were international, as well as local. What happened ultimately when you decided to part?

ALEXANDER

Well, I was seeing Neutra virtually every afternoon for a period of months, as usual. And one day when he was out of town, I received in the mail an invitation to a Neutra show that was to be at UCLA, which I had not heard about. I marked it down on my calendar. I figured I could go. Then I found that I had to go out of town at that time for the opening, but I'd go later. And then that fell through--it was a project that I had to visit--and meantime I had a very close friend (which I'll tell you about, this has to do with a Neutra and Alexander job) who had escaped the revolution in Venezuela and had come to Beverly Hills, Pedro DoPouy. And living in Beverly Hills, he was very close to the UCLA campus. I knew he was an architect interested in Neutra and Alexander work, and Neutra in particular, so I called him and asked if he and his wife would like to join us, because my out-of-town date had fallen through and I could, after all, go to the opening. So we went to his home for dinner and afterwards went to the opening. I came in and I was greeted by somebody at a card table who wanted some money from all four of us. And I said, "Let's see, do you have any special deals for members of the faculty? I'm not a member of the UCLA faculty, but I am a member of the USC [University of Southern California]." "Oh no, nothing like that." So I paid the money.

LASKEY

They didn't know who you were.

ALEXANDER

Oh no, not at all. We were given these programs . We walked in and I expected to see Neutra ' s pristine residential work, which he quite conspicuously kept separate from the office. We came into this room, and the first thing I saw was a row of some charming sketches that he used to make in pastels on his travels. And they were really delightful and charming. They were quite appropriate. And the next thing I knew, I looked around the room and for god's sake there were a lot of Neutra and Alexander projects there, and in the middle was this great big Neutra in six-foot letters. I'm seeing work that I sweat and bled on, that I had designed essentially. And I looked at the program and I got the credit of a secretary in the foreword. I mean, his secretary was so-and-so, and his beloved partner-- I don't know what it was. I don't know what ' s going on here . I ' ve seen the guy every afternoon until last month, and he hasn't mentioned putting this thing together. And he's got Neutra and Alexander together in a Neutra show--for god's sake, what kind of a deal is this? Well, I didn't confront-- Neutra wasn't in any shape to be talked to about it then. But my Venezuelan friend got the idea. Well, this was not the first time that I had an idea that I better get rid of the guy, in spite of all the supposed benefits. It was not unlike him to go off on some tangent where I was excluded, and I should have been included. And I took this as a sign that I would no longer in the future sign a contract with him again. So I told him that the next day. And he wanted to know why. I just didn't want to talk about it. I said, "I just want to disassociate myself from you." He said, "How are we going to handle this work?" I said, "Well, I don't want to make a big scene or a fuss or anything and divide work and so on and confuse our clients. I will agree to finish all the Neutra and Alexander work, see that it gets done and the clients are satisfied, you get copies of all correspondence, and so on. But I will not enter another contract with you, that's all. As soon as this work is terminated, that's all. In the meantime, I will get other work on my own in which you will not be involved. You have your studio, and as soon as I can find a way to do so, I will move out of the Glendale office." Which took maybe a year or so to accomplish. Anyway, I was apprehensive about what might happen from then on in my getting work on my own, because I had in a way submerged my ego in his. However, I found to my pleasure that not just once, but several times, a potential client would call and say, "If you're awarded this job will Neutra be involved in any way? You promise?" And that was true in particular with the university [University of California, Los Angeles]. They had Carl [C] McElvy call me. He said, "There's this $12 million job. Suppose we said we will award it to you and Neutra, but not to you independently. Would you do it? And I said, "Absolutely not. He can have it." And I got that kind of stuff. So I found that there were some advantages in not being associated with him. I just had found that he didn't understand what a partnership is at all, and he never would learn, but I had to learn. I found that out early, but he never did.

LASKEY

Did you see him after the partnership was dissolved?

ALEXANDER

As infrequently as possible. One occasion in which he wanted to have a meeting with me-- I was by then a member of the California Club, and it was to be at noon. I said, "Okay, meet me at the California Club at such and such a time. We'll have lunch together and talk about it." He arrived with Dione. And the California Club has the kind of a thing where if you were with a lady, you go to the second floor, not the first floor. The first floor was exclusively men. It's a men's club, you know. But you can have mixed company on the second floor, or if you come in without a jacket and tie-- I found on one occasion when I had the L.A. planning director for lunch and he came in a turtleneck or something like that-- We started to walk in the dining room, and they turned us back and said, "Second floor." Well, when I took Buffy [Dorothy Buffum] Chandler to lunch there, I had to go to the second floor. Well, he comes in and he makes a scene, and he says, "I've got to have my nurse with me." and all this crap. And he has to be bodily restrained by the elevator people. I mean, he was just damn well insistent. Well, I finally found out what was going on. Somebody tipped me off to get this guy off their necks, so I gently got him to the second floor. It was a very rare occasion when I ever got together with him. And I just kept him informed, just giving him 50 percent of the net income on any Neutra and Alexander work. I made film copies of all of our joint work, working drawings, and gave him one copy and I kept another. All of that stuff of joint and personal practice in some fifty-two packing cases from Bekins went to Cornell Library, at their request.

LASKEY

This is a digression, but I'm rather surprised that you were a member of the California Club.

ALEXANDER

Well, I try anything once. In the first place, what was happening was after I told Neutra I wouldn't go into another contract with him, in '58, November, evidently the news got around all over the place. I had a call from a very dear friend with whom I had been in Cornell architecture, Nat [Nathaniel A.] Owings, and Nat said, "Next time I'm in L.A., which will be so-and-so, I would like to talk to you." So he came and talked to me at Glendale Boulevard. He said, "I understand you've split up with Neutra--good news, good news. You know what? SOM [Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill] would like to expand to Southern California, and we'd like you to be the point man for SOM down here." I said, "Well, that sounds interesting. " Well, the negotiations on this went on for quite a long time, and nothing could be-- I mean, we had announcements agreed upon, including the fact that "You've got to find better quarters than this. I wouldn't be caught dead in a Neutra building. Go into some place that has some prestige." So I found this office space that had been vacated on the top floor of the General Petroleum Building downtown, designed by Welton Becket, just a half a block from the California Club. General Petroleum had been bought by Mobil. And the top officers were given a chance to go to their headquarters in Houston or to resign, or something like that. So their corporate headquarters at the General Petroleum Building were vacant, including all their furniture.

LASKEY

Would this have been on Flower [Street]?

ALEXANDER

Yes, on Flower between Sixth [Street] and Seventh [Street] . It was one of the best early postwar buildings by Becket. These offices had a terrace with an awning, and so on. Well, it was a sort of a Mussolini atmosphere, in a way. And except for the boardroom, I kept the furniture. The boardroom had an enormous oval table made of redwood burl that was gorgeous. It had been moved in there before construction was finished on the building, before installation of enormous glass doors and windows and so forth. So in order to get it out of there-- I had to use that as my drafting room, the boardroom. To get it out of there, they had to cut that table in four pieces, and one of the head maintenance men who had been there when the building was built stood by with tears in his eyes, you know. And there were enough chairs for the whole board, whatever the hell that was, plenty of people. I couldn't use those, so they went out. But the office furniture, which was ponderous and impressive as hell, was left there, besides setting up a drafting room, which I had to have, and a room with a printing machine in it and so on. Anyway, I got a really prestige space of which Nat Owings approved one thousand percent, and I presumed he had the backing to go with it. Well, this all depended on the vote of a meeting of the general partners that was to take place in Jamaica--I think that was it--that year. By god, Nat failed to sell the idea, the objection being that Los Angeles "is not ready for SOM. " [laughter] Well, there I was, stuck with this great big ponderous and prestigious office space. But nevertheless, I had signed the contract and I was going to work it out somehow. Well, I figured I had to have a place to entertain clients, so I joined the University Club, which was at that time right across Hope Street. It had been designed by the Allison brothers [J. E. and David C.]. It was a great university-club type of thing for Los Angeles. It's been torn down, but it was pretty damn good. In the meantime, the only colleague that I knew well enough who belonged to the California Club-- Which was just a half a block away and had a lot more prestige, and I figured might help my getting work to support this monstrous thing I had taken on. So I said to George Vernon Russell, "George, will you put me up at the club?" And he said, "Why not?" So at the time, I was told, somebody's going to have to die before you're admitted as a member, and you've really got to be one of the first families to get in here like this. Well, within a month I heard from them. It turned out that a very good friend of mine that I had known in the depths of the Depression, who had a place up at Squirrel Inn, which was a private family club, a very small one near Lake Arrowhead, had been an adult lifelong member of the California Club, old Southern California family, and was then chairman of the membership committee. He looked at my name and said, "I know that guy. I love him." And all of a sudden I was a member.

LASKEY

Who was this?

ALEXANDER

Thorn [Thomas E.] Gibbon. So I soon became the house liberal, sometimes even the house communist. I was working hard in those days--I'd work on Saturday. And I always had my lunch at the California Club, almost always. I loved good food, and it was great. I also found that at Saturday noon they also served a great meal there, but hardly anybody came in. But there was something called the Saturday Noon Club of the members of the California Club who were really old-timers, such as old man Simpson. Not his son, who sold the company later down the river, but-- Was it William J. Simpson? But, anyway, Simpson, who was president of the chamber of commerce in his career and was a grand old patriarch of the building industry, and a half a dozen other guys who were regulars would come down there just to get together and kick the gong around, have two martinis, for which we would play ship captain and crew with the dice, and then solemnly march in and have lunch together. We would have serious conversations. And these were real conservatives, and not the kind of a bastard who sometimes assumes the name of the conservative. These were conservative conservatives.

LASKEY

Would they have been like Harry Chandler?

ALEXANDER

They would not be like Harry Chandler at all, well, except that they would sometimes have apoplexy over something in the [Los Angeles] Times. But they were not spoilers. They were reasonable and willing to listen to two points of view and delighted to have another point of view in the group. Of course, when it came to finding out they had firm but unwritten rules about exclusion of black and Jewish people and so on-- Well, I'm one of the few people who's ever resigned from the club. But I didn't make a scene about it--there was no particular occasion at the time. But for a period of ten years, which were the sixties, it served my purpose very well. For instance, adjacent to my suite on the top floor there and the guy who had the other terrace at the other end of the building ( I had one terrace, he had another terrace) was the guy who had been appointed by [Fletcher] Bowron when I was on the commission to be chairman of the [Los Angeles City Community] Redevelopment Agency. So I got to see this guy in an informal way. I didn't know what was going on there, but he informed me what was going on. I got to know him pretty well. That stood me in good stead when I resigned from the consulting on the UCSD [University of California, San Diego] campus, and the job I got was Bunker Hill Towers. I mean, just the fact that he knew me--this was no inside deal.

LASKEY

Who was this? Do you remember his name?

ALEXANDER

Certainly.

LASKEY

It wasn't Calvin Hamilton?

ALEXANDER

No, no, no. I'm talking about the chairman of the board. This was the redevelopment agency. Sesnon, Bill [William T.] Sesnon [Jr.].

LASKEY

Okay, okay.

ALEXANDER

Well, anyway, I found out when I came to know the regents that Ed [Edward W.] Carter--a fellow member of the club--had been very much interested in renting the space that I got, and this must have gone over like a million dollars. He wanted my space in the Mobil Building (it was then called the Mobil Building). The rental people said, "We've already made a commitment to Alexander ." Well, it's a nice way to be known by Ed Carter, isn't it? Well, I didn't plan this.

LASKEY

You didn't know that. I'm really sort of surprised that he didn't have the clout to--

ALEXANDER

I think he figured that he did. Anyway, I don't know whether he had a contest over it or whatever, but I know I got the space and found out some time later that it was space that he wanted, and he let other people know that that was the case. So this was one of those side benefits that I didn't expect.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO
OCTOBER 4, 1986

ALEXANDER

I don't know whether you want to skim over any other Neutra and Alexander work?

LASKEY

I do. I have a list of some of the major things that you did that were important that you may want to comment on, especially, well, Venezuela.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, that was a lark. [Marcos] Perez Jimenez was the dictator of Venezuela at the time, and he had decreed that some four blocks wide of development in the center of Caracas, north to south, would be wiped out, redeveloped you might say, to make room for the Avenida Bolivar, a processional boulevard. And at the north end were to be two great office buildings, towers, that were monumental pylons, sort of office buildings, to make his rule seem as grandiose as he wanted it to. Then when that was done, he came down to the office one day and said, "You see this space going in opposite directions across the valley east to west? That can go right out the canyon there to the west point of Venezuela, the Fuerzas Armadas. You're to build a boulevard across in that direction called the Avenida Fuerzas Armadas, and where they come together you are to create a cloverleaf. And over that cloverleaf you are to build a fifty-two-story office building and a thirteen-story department store with a skating rink on top, and since I've already torn down the national theater, you're to build a new national theater there and a hotel, a Hilton hotel, with five hundred rooms. And below the cloverleaf you are to build parking for twenty-five hundred automobiles. What do you think of that?" His chief architect, officially, is Pedro DoPouy. Pedro's brother, Napoleon DoPouy, it turns out, is an intimate friend of King Baudouin of Belgium, who becomes the arms supplier of the regime. So Napoleon is a very important feature in the government. Then the dictator sends this character, his chief architect, around the world to look for the architect that will do this great design to make him important. So Pedro has already been to France and Germany and several architects in the United States, Corbu [Le Corbusier] in France and, you know, what's his name, the three blind mice--

LASKEY

Mies van der Rohe.

ALEXANDER

Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright. And he came to see Neutra at Neutra's studio. Neutra's scared, he doesn't know what to do with this guy, so he brings him over to me out of the blue. Pedro explains what the deal is and he says, "I would like a proposal." I said, "Okay, you want a definite proposal?" He says, "Yes, I want it now." And Neutra is sitting in the background not saying a word. And I say, "Okay, we will develop a schematic design for $50,000, $25,000 of which must be in cash in a local bank in Los Angeles before we touch pencil to paper." And Pedro says, "Very well, you will hear from me." And he goes away and we all forget about it for months, and all of a sudden the international branch of the Bank of America calls us and says, "Hey, we have a check for $25,000 down here for you. You want to get started?" I said, "Sure do." So I went down and got the money and transferred it to our account--and that was a lot more money then than it is today. But that was what we needed so we could make a schematic proposal, not even what you would call preliminary-development drawings, certainly not anything beyond that. So we work on this thing, and we try by correspondence to get feedback from Venezuela--it ' s hard as hell, we don't get any news back and forth. Meantime, I had made a commitment to deliver this schematic design by a certain date. So it comes close to that date. We get frantic, we send telegrams, and in the meantime I make the reservation to go down. I say, "To hell with you guys. We made a commitment to be there. If we don't go, we may not even get our $25,000." So I asked my wife [Mary Starbuck Alexander] to go with me, since it was a twenty-seven-hour trip, maybe more than that, you know. Without jets it took a long time to fly down to Venezuela, to Caracas.

LASKEY

Did you take the great planes, the great clipper ships?

ALEXANDER

Well, this is Pan Am. Previously, in 1951, I'd taken the Boeing Stratocruiser, so-called. I don't know what they called this one, but anyway it was a prop [propeller] plane. I asked our friends the Macks in Pasadena, who owned two coffee fincas in Guatemala, who suggested we stop there for three days and take the grand tour quickly. So we still were unable, by wire or postage, to get in touch with Pedro. We left anyway. We got to Guatemala. We got a driver and went for three days scooting around the mountains. We got up to Chichicastenango, where we had been told that the best hotel room in town was the bishop's room, room 5, in the one little hotel there. And I said, "I think I better call the office." Which was a mistake maybe, but anyway I called the office. And my secretary said, "Oh, boy, I'm glad you called. We have a telegram here from Pedro saying the Alexanders must not arrive in Venezuela, period." I said, "Well, just forget that you ever got in touch with us, because I've come this far, and we're going on." So we finally got back to Guatemala City, and we were down waiting for the Pan Am plane to come along; it turned out to be eight hours late. So we went back to the hotel and sat around, and we finally went down to the plane and got on it. This had mixed up the schedule. I was apprehensive of course, and I talked to everyone on the plane: "What's going on down there?" The Otis Elevator man was there-- Well, nobody knew. There was a lot of unrest. We didn't know what was going on. So we found that-- In order to avoid showing that we were directly concerned with the government in our trip, Neutra had made another contact in Venezuela, which was in Maracaibo, where the plane stops normally before it goes through to Caracas. And I had made a date, or I had made arrangements to stop there on the way, in order to see this other client, who was a young man for whom we were going to design a shopping center and I don't know what. Maracaibo is a lake where a lot of oil was discovered. Most of the Venezuelan oil comes from there. So they're wild with riches.

LASKEY

Well, Standard Oil is.

ALEXANDER

So we found that the pilot said, "Since we are so late, we have decided to overfly Maracaibo and go directly to the Caracas airport." And I didn't want any part of that. We stopped at the Panama Canal Zone, and Mary's feet were swelling, and she wanted to lie down some place. So I said, "Hell, we'll stay here and get a continuation on Pan Am." So I refused to get back on the plane. In fact I got off right away and said, "We're going to a hotel here at Pan Am expense. They have inconvenienced us, and I know that we'll have the best dinner that we possibly can buy, the most expensive room we can find." We stayed at a hotel that had been designed by Ed [Edward D.] Stone. We got the most expensive dinner we could find, in spite of the protests in the airport by every official of Panama. We had a fine night and a rest and proceeded the next morning on a plane that would stop at Maracaibo. When we got there, we asked what was happening. Well, they didn't know. They just knew that there was a lot of unrest in the capital. So we had a news interview there so that it would be on record that we were going there and not to see our friend in Caracas, because I didn't know what we'd find. We went on to Caracas, and to my joy, when I called Pedro he welcomed us with open arms. He never did explain at that time why he had told us not to come. Everything was fine. When it came time for lunch, I said, "Let's have lunch." He said, "We do not have lunch in Venezuela, we have almuerzo, which takes at least two hours." Well, we became very close friends with these people and had a whale of a time. I couldn't speak much Spanish. I had a lot of bravado about using the language, and I had Mary stand by with a Spanish-English dictionary to get some of the words that I had forgotten. But we were fortunate in a way: instead of dealing with native Spanish-speaking people, I was put together with two of the state engineers, neither of which had been born in a Spanish-speaking country. One was Swiss and the other was German, I think. Spanish was the second language to them too, so that made it a little easier; I didn't have to hear rapid-fire Spanish. We got along fine, and I made myself understood technically. Then we had several grand nights with these Venezuelans, who know how to live, believe me.

LASKEY

Oh, really?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. And finally it was time to leave. We went down to the airport early at daybreak, and the plane was eight hours late. So finally, instead of a Pan Am, I took another plane that was less than eight hours late, and it was one that stopped in Havana--it was interesting to be there a little while--and then to Florida and finally to New York.

LASKEY

What time are we talking about? When were you in Venezuela?

ALEXANDER

I can look in my passport in there and tell you.

LASKEY

I have a date here. Would this have been in the fifties?

ALEXANDER

Well, I tell you--

LASKEY

It was pre-Castro Havana.

ALEXANDER

I don't think so. Anyway, you can tell the timing, because ten days after we left, the revolution broke out, and Perez Jimenez was already in Florida living off the fat of his ill-gotten gains. My friend Pedro was not in jail, because they had found nothing wrong with him, but his brother was in house arrest in the island of Curagao, because he had been the arms supplier. But the way they have revolutions down there, they treat honorable people decently. They don't kill them unless it's necessary.

LASKEY

Unless it's necessary.

ALEXANDER

Because they don't know where they're going to be the next time, you know. I wondered, of course, if we'd ever get our other $25,000 plus traveling expenses. So it turned out that they, the new government, set up a tribunal to examine every contract. And in almost every contract involving a foreign architect or engineer, there was some hanky-panky that had gone on, and they didn't honor [the contract]. In our case, there hadn't been any attempt for us to get the job [and] no money changed hands, of course. They finally decided that was the case, and we got one hundred cents on the dollar, which I had never expected to get. Well, sometime after that, I was about to go to bed up in Mount Washington and I got a call from Pedro, who said, "My family and I are at the Biltmore Hotel, and we would like to see you as soon as you can see us." So we went right down to see them, and here were Pedro and Beljica, Pedro's father, Augustin, and Pedro's son, little Augustin. They had moved lock, stock, and barrel to Los Angeles, and we were the only friends in the country they had. They wanted to buy a place in Beverly Hills.

LASKEY

Beverly Hills!

ALEXANDER

Well, they'd heard about Beverly Hills, and this was their speed. And then pretty soon he wanted me to introduce him to my country club. Well, I didn't have a country club and I didn't play golf. In Venezuela they have their country club and this, that, and the other. It's an entirely different life-style from mine. Nevertheless, over a period of time we just had a hell of a ball. Eventually Napoleon got out of his house arrest and came to the United States also, a flamboyant guy if ever I saw one. A dear pal of King Baudouin of Belgium, who visited him while he was in his new house in Beverly Hills. Napoleon figured that he had been born to become dictator of Venezuela someday. His term had not come yet, but it would come someday. Pedro was fascinated by the whole American scene: "Why, you mean that a taxi driver's vote has the same weight as yours? That's incredible. I'd like to learn more about that. What course can I take at UCLA that will--?" He was eager to learn all about the United States and how things worked and how they didn't work and so on. It was fascinating exposure for him--and for me, for that matter.

LASKEY

Did he work as an architect? Did he find work, then?

ALEXANDER

No. No, he never did need to work. They had land holdings, income up to here. They had three daughters and a son. The son had gone to school in Texas, and the three daughters were just perfect Venezuelan daughters. They took care of fixing your drinks and making you comfortable and sweeping up after you, picking up after you, I should say. Well, I never experienced such arrogance and such wonder. It was a very fascinating scene. Oh, one thing is, this Napoleon-- I should say something about the appearance of these characters. Pedro, as I say, welcomed us with open arms in Venezuela. And here I was with this bundle of drawings to sell to Perez Jimenez, you might say, and to convince Pedro of the great idea. I had noticed this processional boulevard with these torres, very, very dignified and very balanced and, I should say, mirror images, you know. And we got into this limousine to go to lunch, or almuerzo, and I said to Pedro as we were driving along this Avenida Bolivar, "There is just one thing that worries me about this. Here you have this grand boulevard and these identical towers on each side, everything apparently the way Perez Jimenez likes it, and it's impossible to get that kind of thing out of the program that you gave us of this fifty-two-story office building and thirteen-story hotel." And I said, "They are not symmetrical." Well, Pedro, I had noticed, had eyeglasses with glass over only one eye, he had a funny- looking ear and a good-looking ear, he had swept his hair over one side of his head as if he must be bald somewhere there. He said, "Why, I myself am not symmetrical." Then he told me that as a baby he had been born with his head attached to his shoulder, and his father had taken him up to New York City to Cornell medical center, where an operation had separated his head from his shoulder and had fashioned a new ear out of his own flesh (he couldn't hear out of it). One eye was perfectly good and the other one needed correction. And the reason he did not have two glasses, one of them good and the other one not, was, he said, "I'll tell you. When we were young, my crazy brother Napoleon and I got into a fracas and a bullet ricocheted a piece of granite off and ruined one of Napoleon's eyes, because it hit his glasses and the glass in that eye cut his eyeball. And that's the reason he looks so funny and has this great big white eye that he can't see out of. And I don't want that to happen to me, so I have only one glass, which is the one where my good eye is, because I don't want to get the other ruined any worse than it is." Well, these two characters were kind of funny looking, but boy did they have flamboyant taste!

LASKEY

They certainly had fun.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, they used to ride horseback right into bars, ride their horses: they owned the place, you know. I don't know how much of the country they owned, but the difference between the squalor and the slums of Caracas and these country-club-dwelling characters-- The difference is what [Ronald] Reagan is trying to bring about in the United States, but he can't go that far before he gets out of office. Well, anyway, that was the Venezuelan lark. It was fun. Napoleon did get into a business venture up here. In spite of the fact his one eye was useless and in spite of the fact that his native tongue was Spanish, he got a pilot's license here.

LASKEY

With one eye?

ALEXANDER

To fly a private jet. And this was before anybody had a private jet in the United States. And he was trying to sell private jets to the military--I mean these little jets. They had all the big ones they needed, but they didn't have little ones for generals. So he had his own jet. I can tell you this was about the time of the completion of the Saint John's [College (Annapolis)] project, which was after I had split from Neutra.

LASKEY

Saint John's was completed after you had split?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, so it would be 1960 or something like that. [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was president. Anyway, the dedication was to be addressed by Eisenhower, and I went back to the thing and-- At least I think it was after we had split. I may be wrong.

LASKEY

I have 1955.

ALEXANDER

Of the dedication?

LASKEY

No, that may have just been the starting date.

ALEXANDER

Well, anyway- -

LASKEY

So, it's some time after '55. And Eisenhower was out in '60. Let's see, '52 and '56, so somewhere between '55 and '59.

ALEXANDER

Okay, so I went back and, among other people, I met Neil [James C. ] Hagerty, who was the pressman for Eisenhower.

LASKEY

Oh, yes, of course.

ALEXANDER

And my stepson Ed [Edward S.] Carpenter, at the age of ten, was publishing a newspaper on Mount Washington called the Mount Washington Star. He and a friend, whose father taught journalism at USC, were getting this newspaper out every month. It cost a dime, and he had subscribers all over the world, and [Robert] Hutchins was one of his subscribers--that ' s a separate story. Ed wrote up my trip to Washington to hear Eisenhower speak and sent a copy [of the Star] to Hagerty, and Hagerty sent this letter back to Ed saying, "Anytime you're in Washington, look me up." And so I was going to Washington soon thereafter, and I got a ticket for Ed. At the last minute, Eisenhower came to Palm Springs because he had a bad cold-- as bad as the one I have now, or worse. So I canceled the ticket, but I said to Ed, "You should go down to Palm Springs and see this Hagerty character." And Ed said, "Okay, I'll call Napoleon and get him to take me down there in his private jet." So it worked. And every time that Napoleon brought his private jet into an airport in California, where they had never seen such a thing, he was the center of attention. So to his great concern and disappointment, he takes Ed down there in his private jet and pulls up under the nose of Air Force One with no attention at all, except a lot of secret service men running around. Anyway, he takes Ed down there, and unfortunately Hagerty had to make a fourth at golf that day with the President, so he couldn't see Ed. But Ed wrote this thing up for his little paper. It was terrific.

LASKEY

Was Napoleon totally nonplussed by this?

ALEXANDER

He was chagrined, but he enjoyed the adventure anyway.

LASKEY

Well, you mentioned Saint John's College. That's another project. Was anything particularly interesting about the project?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, it was fascinating to me-- the curriculum and so on. Our engagement there came about through Neutra being asked to speak at their traditional Friday evening event, which is part of their curriculum. Some of the more liberal faculty members, younger members, knowing that they were getting a grant from the Mellon Old Dominion Foundation to build a new building or two new buildings, urged the president of the college and the board of visitors and governors to consider us as architects. And we were asked to do the work. So my wife and I went back there on the first planning visit, got a room on the campus, stayed on the campus, lived on the campus for ten days and ten nights, which is the way I like to go about doing something like that. So we attended classes and got to know the curriculum and what went on in the college so that we could suggest a development plan that would be comprehensive and get to know what we figured their needs were.

LASKEY

What was their curriculum?

ALEXANDER

Well, this was the third college founded in the United States, after [the College of] William and Mary and Harvard [University] . And its [contemporary] curriculum had been developed by — Let's see, Scott Buchanan and who else? Anyway, it became the "Great Books" curriculum, great books being the background Hutchins --

LASKEY

Robert Hutchins's Great Books.

ALEXANDER

Right. And two of Hutchins's students established the curriculum there, which was Germanic in its rigidity: everybody for four years went through this course of study, which was identical for everybody. There were no electives. In each year there was a course in mathematics, leading from the study of Aristotle through to Einstein. There was, every year, a course in language, not to teach you to converse in that foreign language, but to give you enough understanding of the language to read the great books in their original form. The first year was Greek, the second year was French-- Whatever it was. I don't remember the details. But the general idea was that you would experience every breakthrough in Western thought in this curriculum, which would give you a liberal education from which you could go on to graduate school to any specialty that you wanted to do. The formal organization of the thing was-- Every class consisted of a tutorial of eight students and one tutor. Now, was it two nights a week? Something like that. There were seminars, each seminar consisting of two tutorials. Two tutors and sixteen students. Once a week, there was a lecture or an event, not necessarily a lecture, sometimes an artistic thing by a visiting guest. That was also a rigid formula, starting with a lecture, which was intended to be not too formal but to have a conversational quality, but it was still to be a lecture. And it was required attendance by every faculty member and every student. Not one of those events you might go to or not. This was absolutely required. And at the conclusion of the lecture, everyone marched out into, ideally, a big lobby where they had room to have coffee and converse about the lecture. Then those who wished to went to an optional discussion program in a nearby room for seating two hundred people, maybe, which was to be arranged in such a way that a series of dialogues could take place between the speaker, who would be on the hot seat, and members of the faculty and the students who wanted to pursue his subject farther, in which there would be a one-to-one dialogue that everyone could hear. Okay, well, in science they had certain, let's see, one-hour sessions in the morning--a certain subject could be handled that way. And in the afternoon they would have laboratories in scientific subjects--chemistry, biology, etc. In anything like science, they'd start with the earliest Western thought in science, and leading up to Einstein in the end. Well, it was evident that this would appeal to some people and not to others, but for some I thought it might be just ideal. And I was envious; I would have liked to have been able to take it. We found that Arthur Mellon had stopped by one day just out of curiosity, and found out what they were doing. He said, "I'd like to take some courses here." The president said, "Sorry, we don't give courses, but if you'd like to take the full four years, starting as a freshman, that would be acceptable," And he said, "Okay, I'll do that." And that's what he did, after which he gave the Old Dominion Foundation money, which wasn't enough to do the right job. So we designed a lecture and "hot seat" facility, which would be the Francis Scott Key Auditorium, which was supposed to also accommodate an annual Shakespeare festival. They taught music as part of mathematics, and a science laboratory, which would be the Mellon science laboratories [Mellon Science Building]. Well, Nancy [Jaicks Alexander ] and I visited the darn things for the first time since they were built this past year, I mean in June, and what a shock it was. They were remodeling the interior of the thing, completely gutting it. Well, they weren't gutting the auditorium, but they were gutting the stage area and the "hot seat" room and so on. It had been miserably maintained and was falling apart; it was bad news. It's a typical thing: Institutions get money for buildings to be named after somebody, but to get money to maintain it is something else. Caltech [California Institute of Technology] , for instance, now has a policy that they will accept a gift for a building if an equivalent amount of money is given to maintain it. (The interest from the second fund would be to keep up the building. ) Well, anyway, it was just a disappointment.

LASKEY

So it was left to deteriorate. But the space, as you designed it, was, as I can tell from the photographs and the writings, a rather unique space.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was not appreciated. All new people there, nobody I ever heard of. The president was long since gone. Incidentally, the president that we were dealing with was Dr. [Richard D.] Weigle, who had been one of the "China hands" in the McCarthy era that was kicked out of the [United States] State Department in a hurry because he had something to do with China.

LASKEY

Well, everybody who had anything to do with China was persona non grata, instantly.

ALEXANDER

He came out here at a later date when they had decided that the Saint John's teaching should be expanded. But there is only one way to expand it and make it available to more students, and that was to have other campuses. That is, you don't get a bigger typewriter when you want more typing to be done, you get other typewriters of the same size. That was the theory. And the faculty was so precious about their position. [laughter] Well, for instance, Weigle came out looking for a good, suitable location. I'd been consulting architect on the Claremont Colleges, and it was just made to order, as I saw it. They are always looking for another type of college to have in the Claremont group. And this was a different type of college, entirely different from anything they had there. It wouldn't compete with anybody. But, oh, the faculty was so afraid they would be contaminated by this. Then I had another idea, which would have kept them from being too contaminated, and that was the Riverside inn, which was up for sale at that time.

LASKEY

The Mission Inn?

ALEXANDER

The Mission Inn.

LASKEY

The Mission Inn in Riverside?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, that was up for sale at that time. And of course that is a squirrelly place if ever you saw one.

LASKEY

Oh, yes.

ALEXANDER

But I thought it would be a marvelous place to have this crazy college. Weigle did too, but there again, he was turned down.

LASKEY

That's too bad. It would have preserved the inn if nothing else, as well as the curriculum of Saint John's. They could have benefited each other.

ALEXANDER

And a funny sideline on this, in my interview by the regents for the UCSD consulting-architect position, I had mentioned Saint John's College, and one of the regents asked me in the question period, "Why didn't you get the job?" He knew that they had finally landed in Santa Fe, that the second college of Saint John's was in Santa Fe. So he said, "Why didn't you get that job if you were so good?" And I said, "Well, it just happens that the architect that got the commission gave the land for the college." He said, "Oh, yes."

LASKEY

That's very interesting. Well, you did other work with Neutra, well, the Adelphi University.

ALEXANDER

Adelphi, yeah. That was perhaps the only educational institution which in the Depression went through chapter eleven bankruptcy and survived.

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE
MAY 11, 1987

LASKEY

Adelphi University in New York, would you care to talk about that?

ALEXANDER

Adelphi is little known in the United States as a whole. It is on Long Island in Garden City, which is the home of a good many publishers. The president of the college before we were contacted was working with a new board of trustees, including James [A.] Linen [Jr.] of Time, Inc. They had great ambitions for complete revision of the appearance [of the college] , both physically and through the curriculum, and engaged us when they were having these wild dreams- -most of which never materialized. As a matter of fact, I developed a guideline for a curriculum which would be oriented around communications. Since everyone in the world who was of interest and importance worldwide came through New York City, the idea was that there would be a communications room rented in the Waldorf Astoria or some other location on Manhattan. It would be linked by closed-circuit TV with a room which was sort of an auditorium, egg shaped in our plan, where the world would be brought to the campus, even though nobody would go out of his way to go there. There was to be a room focusing on the news worldwide. The entrance to the library would be in the form of a globe. I believe there's something similar to what we had in mind at the Christian Science headquarters in Boston. In any event, as you walked through this globe-- Which would have a map of the globe on the outside, and inside there would be a light flashing inside on Amman, Jordan, where there would be a news story that very day continuing for perhaps a week. In the meantime, the librarians would have gotten up exhibits of books and other material related to Jordan. It would focus attention immediately on something happening in the world related to material in the library. There were a great many other features--which I don't recall right now--to this basic curriculum, which encompassed every study you can imagine, of course, even though it was simplified into a concept of communications. Linen, of course, of Time, Inc., was all in favor of this; however, they never raised the funds that they anticipated raising. We did make a master plan and a development concept. The only thing we designed that was ever built there was the [Swirlbul] Library, which was rather simple. Its visual feature was a stairway, a circular stairway reflected in a mirror behind the stairway, so that half the spiral gave you double your money. [laughter]

LASKEY

Now, do I understand that this is all that was built of the university?

ALEXANDER

They had some pretty good dreams of expansion, but they never managed to raise the funds for it.

LASKEY

This was a private school?

ALEXANDER

Yes.

LASKEY

How did you happen to get involved in curriculum development?

ALEXANDER

Well, nobody else was doing it, and they were just talking about it. It was on an airplane that I developed the concepts that were related to the senses and to various means of communication. I wish I had the material here. It was interesting. It was really off the top of my head and it was really based on conversations that we'd had. But nobody seemed-- Time after time we'd go there and nobody seemed as though they were getting anywhere with making this a concrete proposal --

LASKEY

Did you actually make and form it into a concrete proposal?

ALEXANDER

Yes. However, I don't consider it a very important end result. So let's go on to something else. You mentioned Gettysburg. Let's see, did we talk about the Visitors Center at [the] Petrified [Forest National Monument] ?

LASKEY

No, I have that on the list to talk to you about. Were they done more or less at the same time?

ALEXANDER

Well, the only reason I was mentioning it in connection with Gettysburg is that simultaneously we were contacted by the East Coast office of design and construction for the [National] Park Service and by the West Coast office of design and construction, neither of whom had talked to the other about what they proposed to do in this connection. So we were asked by the eastern office to develop a visitors center for Gettysburg and by the western office to develop a visitors center for what was then the Petrified Forest National Monument. It later became a national park. It was then Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Monument. Well, of course, [Richard J.] Neutra getting ahold of a job at Gettysburg meant that immediately it had to be the Lincoln Memorial. [laughter] And, in fact, he refers to it that way in several locations. Any time he had a chance he wanted to emphasize his connection with Lincoln.

LASKEY

Well, what was that actual program?

ALEXANDER

The program was what they called the Visitors Center. It is now called the Cyclorama Building, which is more appropriate. But at that time there was no other visitors center there. The National Park Service had a program called, oh, something '66. By 1966 they were to have all these various programs completed. And most of the projects were visitors centers. The one at Gettysburg was going to feature an enormous circular mural, a cylindrical mural. I forget the dimensions, but I think it's something like 120 feet in diameter and 30, 40 feet high, or higher than that. The mural was painted by a whole crew of artists who had been assembled by [Paul] Philippeteaux, a Frenchman. And it was typical of cycloramas of the time. Before TV and before theaters, enormous canvases in the form of tubes were developed. They could be rolled up, put on a wagon and carted around the country, set up overnight like a circus, and people paid to go into and view them. This was entertainment. And only two that I know of still survive. One had already been erected in Atlanta, Georgia. I forget what the subject was, but of course it was related to the Civil War, the southern half of the Civil War. The Gettysburg scene was Pickett's charge, and that's there now. It's called the Cyclorama Building instead of the Visitors Center; an entirely different visitors center much more appropriate to the function is now in place. But this concept of showing and displaying the cyclorama, which was in storage in some Philadelphia warehouse, led to the form of the buildings that turned up. Neutra's approach on this thing was important, since the job had obviously come to him and because of him. I waited and waited to get some start at a solution. The only thing I got eventually was a sketch by one of his boys in his studio of some enormous urns. I didn't think anything about it until some time later, since I had not been a student of Corbusier, although I'd read a lot of his work in writing. It was a cold steal from a Corbu sketch of a proposed memorial following a great battle of some kind. And there is no way that I could feature fitting this cylindrical object and displaying it within these urns. As I see it now, I could probably do that. It may have been more appropriate, because what turned out was something you might-- If you were going to be derogatory, you would say that was just a Standard Oil storage tank. Because the very nature of the program was, if you peel it down to its bare essentials, this circular form, a tube in three dimensions. In order for people to come inside and see it, it had to be raised up off the ground. So the first floor was devoted to a series of Civil War exhibits, which they change frequently. They get material out of their warehouses, of which they have plenty. And then one goes up a ramp. We decided on a ramp because we were trying to handle a tremendous number of people. I forget what the annual Easter visitation is there, but my god, it's just people from wall to wall. It's fantastic. This was already forecast, so that we had the ramp going up and the ramp coming down. One goes up the ramp, there's a park service person there who describes the mural and the battle. There are flashing lights and the cannons roaring, and then the people go down the ramp and out.

LASKEY

So it's a cyclorama with sound effects?

ALEXANDER

Neutra had a wonderful idea, I thought, and that was that on the way out there would be Lincoln's Gettysburg Address spoken by Carl Sandburg, which I thought was a damn good idea. The park service turned it down, however .

LASKEY

Did they have a reason?

ALEXANDER

Well, I really don't know what the reason was. Connie [Conrad L.] Wirth was the head chief administrator of the park service of the time. And we had difficulties with him on the other job. Well, in any event, I have visited it since. It's now the Cyclorama Building. Oh, another idea that Neutra had-- This is something that was repeated in several of our projects together. Wherever an audience was called for, he wanted some enormous opening to expand the thing so that, in this case, people by the thousands could sit on the lawn outside and hear some address by a speaker. His concept of a podium elevated was really, well, it was right out of a cathedral. It was a very, very beautiful thing I thought. But in order to accomplish these rolling doors on a cylindrical pattern (it would roll back), we ran into some problems. The soil was very unstable, and every foundation had to be brought to underlying limestone. We very carefully had test borings made so that we knew where the limestone was for the entire structure, and every column footing was to be adjusted to this particular location. After construction started, we suddenly had an alarm sounded from the contractors: "My god, it's not the way you said it was." I went back there to find out what was going on, and I found that we had been given a site location by the design and construction people, and the historians of the park service had made a visit to the site and said, "No, that's not a good place for it. Let's put it over here." And without telling us and without telling the design and construction people, they moved the site. So the foundations and the underlying limestone were in no relation to what we had assumed. So, unfortunately, we were very, very quick and hasty in getting things in shape again. In any event, the distance between the-- Well, the width of the opening was so large on an otherwise symmetrical plan that there was bound to be some problem with deflection--that is, with parts of the building sinking farther than others. And in spite of every precaution we took, there was some uneven settling, as a result of which these enormous doors no longer work, they bind.

LASKEY

But they were actually built.

ALEXANDER

They were actually built, and everything actually worked at the beginning. And then later on the doors bound. An interesting story, to me anyway: I took my wife [Nancy Jaicks Alexander] to see the building, and we went through the rigmarole of experiencing the battle and all that sort of thing. And then she sort of hung back, I didn't know why. And it was to go up to the park service lady, who had given the lecture, to say that I was the architect. Well, the lady had been saving a list as long as your arm of things wrong with the building. [laughter]

LASKEY

Which you attended to, now that you were there.

ALEXANDER

[It] taught my wife a lesson. But she was talking about how many times the roof had leaked. Well, there's water of course-- "The trouble was they chose a California architect, and the roof leaked." Well, I pointed out that roofs leak in California. We have some rain in California, and they have rain there. And if it had leaked and they had had it fixed several times, what about the other times when we weren't there? Maybe the first time was our fault, but not the second, not the third, not the fourth time. Well, she didn't seem to take to my countercriticism any better than I took to hers. Anyway, she had a long list of complaints, and I think some were justified. The fundamental plan, in addition to what I mentioned, had a long ramp up to the roof of such mundane things as the toilets that are always necessary in a public place like this, and the library for research, and so on. And this was a level deck space, which may very well have leaked on account of a lot of people walking up there. That may have been the problem she was talking about. This was a place from which, after you had seen the cyclorama, you could go out and view the scene of the battle from this deck, and that worked pretty well. The original design included a tower with an elevator, which would have been even better, but they rely on one that was built probably 150 years ago, at least 100 years ago, that is very rustic and some distance away from the site. Well, this was going on at the same time the Western office asked us to design a visitors center for the Petrified Forest National Park. This one involved something entirely different. It turned out that it was so remote, so removed from civilization, that it had to contain every element of a city. It was like a little town. The visitors center was a small item compared to the whole project.

LASKEY

Now, the Painted Desert-- My geography is terrible, but it's in Arizona, right? So the visitors center is actually going to be out in the desert?

ALEXANDER

It's at the entrance to the Petrified Forest, which is adjacent to the-- What do you call it? The Painted Desert. Maybe it's part of the same thing. I never --

LASKEY

They run into each other; it's hard to separate them. But you're removed from any kind of civilization.

ALEXANDER

Holbrook [Arizona] is the nearest town. It must be sixty, eighty miles away. There's no town anywhere near it. So we had to provide housing for park service personnel and a Fred Harvey's restaurant and store, like a little country store, including a post office, [and] a two- room school for the kids of the park service personnel plus a few Indian children. The industrial section of the city, or the town, was the road maintenance and that sort of thing. All the dirty things that you have to do to maintain a place like that. So that all of these elements were in the program. It turned out that Connie Wirth, and I guess all the park service personnel in Washington, D.C. , envisioned-- especially since California architects had been selected-- [that] we would have San Fernando Valley type of housing. And since they had acres and square miles of space, naturally they'd be separated and scattered. And on the contrary, the conditions we found when we went there were that there was a constant wind of twenty- five miles an hour almost all the time. And nothing growing above your knees. So that if you separated the houses by a mile, you could still see everything that went on. There was no privacy involved there. And there was no wind protection, and nothing would grow unless it was protected by something or other, walls or whatever. And then we looked around, and very, very close to the site where the visitors center was to be there were the remains of an Indian pueblo that had been occupied for some nine hundred years, I think. It had been deserted some seven hundred years before. It was sort of an apartment house. It was very, very tightly knit, and its back was to the wind. The wind was invariably from whatever direction it was. I forget, it seems to me it was from the northeast or the southeast. Anyway, there was a constant wind from a certain direction. The Indians had taken note of that. They had clustered their housing, which makes sense in lots of ways. So we proposed a complex in which everything was together in a tight-knit group. This is not only economical from a plumbing, electrical, and every other standpoint, but it provided wind protection and helped everything else. And as you entered this complex, the little visitors center on one side, the Fred Harvey's complex on the left, this was forming a screen to a court in which you could grow a few things. There was a two-room school across the way and the housing complex in the form of a series of houses, each of which was L-shaped enclosing a court, with relatively few walls that were in contact one to the other. But they were close together, they were adjacent to each other. And this was highly criticized by people in Washington.

LASKEY

For what reason?

ALEXANDER

Because it wasn't like the San Fernando Valley. The houses weren't individual houses, separated, you know. What they had in mind would not only be unsuccessful as living quarters, as we saw it, but would be much more expensive and would louse up a lot of land that should be kept in pristine condition. Well, this was one of two projects, both federal--or actually there were three, as it finally turned out--in which they said, "We will just sign a contract at the present time for everything up to the completion of working drawings, and then we will let a separate contract for inspection of the work as it goes along under construction." And when it came to that decision, they said, "Well, now we have a superintendent out there who has some experience in construction, we're going to have him supervise or inspect construction. " And we had no way to overcome this disadvantage. So we said, "Okay, that's the way it's going to be." And I don't know how many years later I was contacted by the western office in San Francisco: "Please come up and talk about what's going on at Petrified." What had gone on there was that we had had test borings made and found out that there was a particular kind of clay down just below the surface that was very, very expandable when moistened. This has a great advantage for certain things, but for building construction it's terrible. So we had specified that all of this particular kind of clay be removed and good compacted earth replaced before construction began. And evidently they had not done that, so things were settling right and left. So in those two jobs there were settling problems, but in this one it was pretty bad. There wasn't anything-- Well, there were remedies, but they would be very costly. So I made a report. Obviously we had not been in charge and had not overseen the construction, and they were not blaming us. But nevertheless, it was rather sad to see this happen. I haven't been by there recently, so I couldn't tell you what's happened since.

LASKEY

What could they have done, or what could they have planned to do?

ALEXANDER

You mean after this? Well, you can take concrete under high pressure and pressure it under some of these foundations--after lifting. It's very, very difficult and complex to lift the buildings and to get them into shape again. But it probably is the way I last saw it. Well, anyway, it was a great success in some ways, and in that particular way it was not a great success. I was just reminded of one element. They had great difficulty with people coming in and taking souvenirs in the form of petrified wood. I mean, they would come in and open their trunk and fill it. It doesn't take many years for them to deplete the supply of petrified wood on the surface. So that they had an inspection program on the way out, but they couldn't cover it, apparently, very thoroughly. I made a suggestion that they put a sign up for those on the way out pointing out that the petrified wood was radioactive, which it was a little bit, and that people should be aware of the severe sexual damage that would occur. And that the park service denied all responsibility for impotence or other sexual dysfunctions. [laughter]

LASKEY

I don't assume they did that.

ALEXANDER

No, they didn't do it.

LASKEY

That's too bad. But you did build the structure pueblo style. Were you able to convince the park service that this was--?

ALEXANDER

Pueblo style, I would say, in its contemporary architectural form. But we did convince them finally that they'd have better living conditions in what we were proposing. I don't know how the park service personnel feels about it on the site today. I wish I did. I will get by there some time perhaps.

LASKEY

It must have been interesting to be working on these two projects simultaneously, dealing with opposite ends of the country.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and different personnel entirely in the two different offices.

LASKEY

Different climates, different histories, such totally different needs. It would be a very interesting experience.

ALEXANDER

It was. And a project-- I don't know how it's related to the time, but you noted it here. Is it in some list of work? The Dayton Museum [of Natural History] .

LASKEY

Oh, yeah. Let me tell you exactly. That was 1959 when that was completed, as opposed to '63 for the Gettysburg.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was designed quite a bit before '59.

LASKEY

Yeah, actually it shows the Visitors Center at Gettysburg and the Visitors Center at the Petrified Forest as '58. Then '59 as Dayton, Ohio, the Museum of Natural History. And then there is something else that is the Lincoln Memorial Museum at Gettysburg. Is that a whole different thing? It says "with Richard Neutra." I'm reading from American Architects.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, well, that's Neutra's, whatever you call it, hyperbole.

LASKEY

But is that the Cyclorama Building?

ALEXANDER

That is the Cyclorama Building.

LASKEY

And that was what he chose to call it. Anyway, according to the information I have here, it was '59.

ALEXANDER

Okay, the museum might have been finished in '59, but it was designed a couple of years before that. It's a children's museum with some hands-on experience and a lending library for lending animals, rabbits.

LASKEY

Really? And actually take home, a little lending zoo?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, that's part of it. I realize now that when I say I designed something, I planned it. And all other kinds of influences came beyond the concept, but the concept was something that I have not seen in many museums. This is a very small museum, but nevertheless, they have the same problems that every museum has . They didn't have the money to build sufficient storage. I'm sure they must run into that sort of thing, the way most museums are. But they were to have a series of exhibits for children, and these were to change every once in a while. And this means working on the thing. So what I designed had a central core of work area with exhibits on the outside facing out. This would be a combined storage area and work area in which you could work on the stuff without getting in the way of the people going through the museum. Then I had run into the availability of a very small planetarium. I guess I first tried one out at Orange Coast College in their science building, and we used it again at Saint John's College [Annapolis] and at the Dayton Museum of Natural History. It's a Zeiss planetarium, which is very good for showing to, say, oh, twenty people at a time. It's a small thing. I forget the dimensions right now, but maybe it will show on a dome that's twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter, not a great big thing. And in the case of the Dayton design, this was housed in what appeared to be a full globe, and the globe was resting in a pool of water for reflection value, and some stepping-stones to get into it, which was a charming appearance.

LASKEY

I have seen photographs of the museum. It looks lovely, but it doesn't look like something I would expect to find in Dayton.

ALEXANDER

That's right. Things have changed since then, but at that time I remember calling-- I was in Dayton all alone on this occasion. I knew that if we were going to do something like this, we needed a local architectural representative to follow construction, which would be costly for us to do. And I called an editor of Progressive Architecture at the time, and I told him where I was and what I wanted. He said, "Well, you're in the black belt of architecture." Now, this was in the fifties, and I'm sure that things are quite different today. But he had some time trying to think of someone he would recommend. I forget the person that he chose, but it seems to me he was a Cornell [University] architect, as a matter of fact. In any event, that turned out all right.

LASKEY

How did you get involved with it in the first place? How did you get invited?

ALEXANDER

Well, that's partly a sad story, in a way. A former student of Neutra's, or whatever you call it, a guy who inhabited his studio, where you could get an architectural education without pay-- That is to say, you didn't get paid. Nick Athens is the name of the guy who had started to work with these people, and he was in Yellow Springs, I believe. He had started to work with the board, and the board had found him incompetent, which he turned out to be, in my opinion. And so we started to attempt to work with him, and we found that it was impossible. He could not be a representative with the board, and the board did not want him, they wanted us. We had no contractual arrangement at that point. But he was so upset by this that twenty years later or more-- The state of Ohio had adopted a statute of limitations law that would put a limitation on the time one could sue for malpractice, I think it was, or something like that. And all of a sudden-- This is after Neutra and everybody connected with it had died except me, and he sued me. And I had to defend myself somehow. So I had to get in touch with a lawyer by telephone, so it didn't cost too much. Actually, Nick ended up without a lawyer because he didn't pay his lawyer.

LASKEY

Well, what did he sue you for?

ALEXANDER

Well, I suppose he felt that since he had called Neutra about this job that he had the equivalent of a contract to be a part of the architectural team that would do it. There was no agreement on my part or Neutra ' s that this would be the case. But if you get sued, you have to defend yourself--regardless of the fact that this had no merit at all and it never got to court. As I say, he didn't pay his lawyer--it just caused me a lot of trouble-- and I paid mine. Well, that's the way the thing came [to us] . He called Neutra, Neutra called me. I was on my way back from Adelphi, I think, at the time. Anyway, I was about to take a plane to Los Angeles, and I switched it to Dayton.

LASKEY

Did you have difficulty convincing the people who were building the museum--? Would it have been the city of Dayton?

ALEXANDER

No, no. It was a private thing. It's a private museum.

LASKEY

It's a very Southern California, modern-looking building, which in 1959, or even earlier--

ALEXANDER

They were looking for something like that.

LASKEY

They were. So you didn't have difficulty convincing them?

ALEXANDER

The director and, I guess, more than one person on the board wanted it that way. And in Dayton, which is sort of an industrial town. General Motors [Corporation] has kind of a big organization. They have a plant in Dayton. And if the representative of GM in charge of their operations in Dayton goes on record with a gift of a certain size, that's a cue for every other organization as to whether it's a big deal or a little deal. So they didn't lose out entirely, but they didn't get anything like the support they'd hoped for. But they did have the good fortune that the-- Who was the very important man at General Motors? He came into the existing museum and got into a conversation with a little tiny kid. And this developed some rapport so they did get, finally, a reasonable donation from General Motors . And then General Cash Register and the other people came along with suitable proportionate gifts. So it was all a private setup.

LASKEY

Did you find from a design point of view or structural point of view that it was more difficult to design for a midwestern climate than for a Southern California climate? Does it matter a lot?

ALEXANDER

Well, we have every type of climate right here, from the bitter cold, snowy Rocky Mountains down to the desert, and in between we have all kinds. I didn't find a great difference. In the case of Adelphi, we were using reinforced concrete, and we were told how that wouldn't work in the East. Well, since then people like I. M. Pei and others have used it copiously, and no big deal. We were told that this might be all right for freeways, but not for a building. I don't know how it looks today--it would be interesting. Well, the Dayton museum was fun to work on.

LASKEY

Were you pleased with it?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. They didn't have enough money to do a top-notch job, but it was satisfying. The kids loved it, so what the hell.

LASKEY

That's all that counts.

ALEXANDER

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America [Building], that's very much a Neutra job, that is, both Richard and Dione [Niedermann] Neutra. I developed a plan, and beyond that it has all the earmarks of Neutra in superficial design. What do you want to know about it?

LASKEY

Whatever you want to tell me about it. Unfortunately, I could not locate the building, so I'm not sure if it's still there.

ALEXANDER

It's in Los Angeles.

LASKEY

I was checking in Rosemead.

ALEXANDER

Rosemead? No, it's in downtown L.A.

LASKEY

I think from reading about it and from the photographs, I was sort of more interested in the murals, which were by Burle Marx of Brazil.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO
MAY 11, 1987

LASKEY

Okay, I guess next on the agenda is the Miramar [Naval Base] Chapel.

ALEXANDER

Well, I had a direct confrontation with Neutra on the design of this thing: not the outside stairway, which makes a beautiful photograph with its reflection in the water, but inside he conceived of a ceiling that would slope downward toward the focal point of the altar or nave, or whatever you want to call it. As I looked at it, it did nothing to lift the spirit, from my standpoint. However, it did win an award for navy work that year.

LASKEY

That's the Miramar Naval Base down in San Diego County that we're talking about.

ALEXANDER

Well, the design of the interior was something I objected to, but of course I gave way. Not of course, but in that case I gave way entirely to Neutra 's fancies.

LASKEY

Now, this is--at least the year that I have for this is--1957, so this is very much at the time of the other projects that we have been talking about.

ALEXANDER

Right. This is when I was having trouble with the old man. San Pedro Hotel must have been before that though, wasn't it? Wasn't that also about the same time?

LASKEY

Well, it was a little bit earlier. Nineteen fifty-three is the year that I have for that.

ALEXANDER

Well, the hotel was a community project. There was some firm that was promoting hotels--which turned out to be a motel in this case, I would call it--as community projects in which people in the community would buy stock in the corporation, so that it was community owned. There was a man named Soderstrom in charge of the committee, the community committee. This meant that every Sunday the site, after it was under construction, was swarming with Sunday morning quarterbacks or superintendents, which was rather interesting. I have not been back to this. It again was rather fragile, as several of these projects are, in construction. I just wonder how it has kept up. It was intended to provide a service that San Pedro at the time lacked in the way of a decent hotel.

LASKEY

Well, it's a fascinating design. It must have been beautiful sitting up on the hills looking down towards the ocean.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, a good environment. And there was a feature on the inside that I recall, fish tanks. Not pictured here, are they?

LASKEY

No.

ALEXANDER

In the dining area as dividers.

LASKEY

Yes. I don't have those here, but I have some photographs of that. These are drawings. Well, I judged that it never did come to a parting of the ways with Neutra, on tape, right?

ALEXANDER

Well, actually we did, and what we're doing here is we were just sort of picking up some of the projects that we hadn't talked about in the course of talking about the partnership. This was sort of an addendum situation that we were dealing with today. Because it was in 1958 that I told him I would not enter another contract with him, but that I would complete the work that was under way where we had a contract obligation, without making a fuss, if possible.

LASKEY

Now, some of that work continued for--

ALEXANDER

Well, for four years.

LASKEY

Until you got it all completed. At that time were you actually working with Neutra? Or did you more or less take care of finishing that up on your own?

ALEXANDER

Well, for two years I remained in the same location.

LASKEY

This is on Glendale Boulevard?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. I think it was 1960 when I moved to the top floor of the Mobil Building. I don't know what I covered in discussing my separation, but do you recall?

LASKEY

Just a second. Before we move on and leave Mr. Neutra far behind us, are there a couple of other projects to be talked about?

ALEXANDER

Well, there were two art centers which we worked on together: one was for the university, the state university in the San Fernando Valley. The other one was for the University of Nevada [at Reno] . In the case of the-- What's it called? San Fernando State?

LASKEY

I think San Fernando State College is what it became. [California State University, Northridge]

ALEXANDER

Okay. In that particular case, the office of the state architect had been for some time designing all state work. They had gone through a period when they had been engaging architects in private practice on virtually all of their work, but then there came a time--just before we were doing the [Los Angeles County] Hall of Records, it seems to me--when they attempted to build up an architectural office that would be similar [in size] to one behind the iron curtain. I mean, they recruited in Ireland for young architects eager to work in a big office, or any office. And they were trying to build it up into a behemoth of an organization. The biggest architectural organization this side of the iron curtain is the way some people put it.

LASKEY

For what reason?

ALEXANDER

Well, it's just the nature of bureaucracy to expand if possible. And I believe it was Chuck [Charles] Luckman who finally pulled enough political strings to reverse the trend. But in any event, this was in a period when we were asked to design this art center or art building for San Fernando State.

LASKEY

Okay, I just want to interrupt you for just a minute. I think that San Fernando State became Northridge now, in the change. Is that right?

ALEXANDER

That sounds right.

LASKEY

I think it's the state university at Northridge, California State University, Northridge.

ALEXANDER

That makes sense. Okay, Northridge. Well, anyway, it was then San Fernando State, I believe. I got a call from the office of the state architect asking if we'd be interested, and of course we were. I was told that we wouldn't even have to design the building--it had already been designed. So we'd have a preliminary design to work on, and all we'd have to do would be the working drawings. So, of course, the negotiations for the compensation for design would have to be influenced by that. And I listened, but I didn't agree to it. And then I found that the state architect had indeed developed a preliminary design, which the faculty revolted about. They went to headquarters or the governor's office or somewhere and they raised hell, so that in effect the office of the state architect was asked to get an architect in private practice. And since this was for the art faculty, I guess they figured that they could hide behind the name of Neutra, and as long as he was named as the architect, maybe they could get their design built.

LASKEY

Do you remember who the architect was at that time?

ALEXANDER

No, I don't. It's really not a personal vendetta at all, just a matter of principle.

LASKEY

Oh, no, I know that.

ALEXANDER

Anyway, we had a target of budget as well as time, and we turned out, I think, a credible multistory building for the purpose in record time and within the budget. One thing that is remarkable to me about the thing is that, as a sort of superficial thing, Neutra put some fins on the outside of the building on the south side, I suppose it was, shading windows partially, and they bear a striking resemblance to those we designed for the [Los Angeles County] Hall of records. He had this picture taken with his head in the foreground looking up and seeing these fins in the background. And this was for the purpose, as I see it now, of identifying himself with these fins, which occurred in at least these two cases, and he probably would like to have had them in other cases too. Well, they were immaterial to me; they were an accessory to this building that was not necessary. I think they were probably irrelevant, but they were there anyway as a sort of a trademark .

LASKEY

Now, these were the louvers?

ALEXANDER

No, not the louvers. Stationary fins. In the case of the hall of records, they are on the side facing-- It would have been Temple [Street]-- What is it?

LASKEY

Yeah, Temple, that's actually the main thrust of the building.

ALEXANDER

Well, we had also been asked by the state architect of Nevada, who was also in charge of handling work for the University of Nevada, and he engaged us, as a firm, to design an art center [Church Fine Arts Complex] for the University of Nevada [at Reno] campus. And that was very much more of a complex than the building in San Fernando. It involved drawing and painting studios, as well as sculpture and dance and drama. In the case of the dramatic arts, they went along with the idea that we found difficult to convince others to do, and that was to have a small New York-type theater with a full-stage house, so you could have flying scenery and a small audience. In most other cases, in educational institutions there is a tenden- cy to demand a combination auditorium which is supposed to serve all purposes, and it doesn't serve any one of them perfectly. So that something that is designed as a lecture hall is not an ideal hall for dramatic arts, and one that is designed for dramatic arts is not ideal for music, and so it goes. Well, anyway, this was I think a very good exercise--the one in Nevada. Each one of the arts was given a very favorable presentation of an acting place. Now, just a few years later when I decided not to do any work with Neutra anymore, I got a call from the state architect in Nevada again, asking me if I'd be interested in designing the library [Getchell Library] for the Reno campus. I said, "You know, I'm no longer associated with Neutra." He said, "I know that. That's the reason I'm calling you." And he said, "There are a couple of problems. For one thing, there's been a real revolt in the legislature due to the fact that they are asked to appropriate funds for design one year, and after the design is approved they are asked the next year to appropriate funds for the building. And sometimes it takes a long time to get the building built after it's been talked about. And so this time they said, 'We're tired of that. We will appropriate the total budget for design and construction, and you have to have it under construction when we meet again next year or we will take the money away." So he said, "We have a deadline. We have to get this designed and under construction by a certain date. Can you do it?" And I said, "Of course." I went over there, and I was dismayed by the site that was given to us, which was tawdry, run-down, in between the oldest building on the campus--I believe it was the women's gymnasium, which was a mess--and some rather attractive multistory dormitory that had been built, it seemed, in Victorian times.

LASKEY

In Las Vegas?

ALEXANDER

No, not Las Vegas. This is Reno.

LASKEY

We're still in Reno. I'm sorry.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. Reno. And the original campus was, and still is, a beautiful swath of green, rectangular, with the school of mines as the prominent feature at one end of it, lined with cork oak trees sheltering the paths. I wanted to have some relationship to that old, beautiful campus. And I also didn't care for having the women's gym, which was just an ugly building, as the immediate adjacent neighbor. So I designed the library itself as an amorphous box, I would say, that had sufficient space in it for all that they requested. I found that the chief librarian of the Reno campus had been there for twenty- five years. And he told me that twenty- five years before, when he came here, he said, "What you need is a new library." And now he was finally going to get it. So somehow, by that time I'd been burned enough to realize that designing something specifically to the idiosyncrasies or whims of an individual is fraught with danger. And fortunately I avoided being caught in that trap here, because the day of the dedication of the building his retirement was announced. So that the building had been designed so that you could put stacks anywhere. That is, it was designed with a bookload everywhere, rather than having stacks as a separate thing. And as far as the design goes, I partook of the beauty of the central campus by developing an arcade that covered or sheltered two ramps. One ramp down to the ground floor, which was largely below grade, and one up to the first floor, so that handicapped could use it and also as an excuse for this extended arcade which reached beyond the women's gym and into the main campus. It hooked onto the main walk, or on one side of the quad. When the design was presented to the board of trustees, the president had already seen it and gone over it with me, and the librarian and everybody, as far as I knew, was satisfied. And all of a sudden in the middle of this formal meeting of the board of trustees, when I presented the building, the chief engineer of the university made an impassioned speech against the design because of the "unnecessary" arcade. So this became a real flap. They'd made no decision on that occasion, so I went home and wrote a little sort of editorial about unnecessary things, and how I understood that at one time in the glorious days of the peak of the mining activity in Nevada, under the most gruesome circumstances, those miners had brought unnecessary things like Lilly Langtry and some of the great sopranos of the time. They brought culture, and everything they brought in that connection was unnecessary, and I found that unnecessariness was a hallmark of civilization. And I presumed that the citizens of Nevada, if asked today, would agree that they needed unnecessary things. So that this editorial was quoted in the papers, both in Reno and Las Vegas, to good effect, and at the next meeting of the board they approved the design. Some more about the design. I walked around the campus with the president when I was first engaged. I looked around, and the latest buildings that had been built were very-- Not just simple. They were drab and formless and had very little punch to them and had flat roofs. And as we walked past the site, these Victorian dormitories were there with gables all over. And I said, "I'd like to repeat the gables in form." And he thought that was great. He didn't want a flat roof. So that resulted in the sort of gablelike form there, but that in practice, in effect, is a post-tensioned, folded plate, which spans virtually the entire top floor of the library with a plate that is only four inches thick of concrete. That had been done before several times at that particular time.

LASKEY

I was going to say, did you have any trouble convincing the people that gave permits that this was adequate?

ALEXANDER

All the talk. We did strike a problem in actually trying to do it, which is a technical problem I guess I shouldn't go into now. But from an appearance standpoint, I wanted to deny the accent on the peak, and I got Malcolm Leland, who was a sculptor friend of mine trained at Cranbrook [Academy of Art] . I had him work on the hall of records on all of the sculptural details. I asked him to design various elements. For one thing, I wanted something to break the peak. You can't see it in that picture, but he designed a little sort of a-- What would you call it? He designed something that separated the roof at the peak. And then I designed a curving form on the top of the V-shape, so that the whole effect is one of a flight of birds with the accent on the bottom part of the zigzag rather than at the top. And the fascia of that birdlike form in material is glass mosaic of silver and black, relating to the silver mines of Nevada. Then some nearby buildings had used limestone, which I used in the portion that is not reachable by human hands, because I noticed where limestone had been used on columns and so forth. Some lady would have written a note to her boyfriend in lipstick and various things of that kind. So that anything that was close to where people could reach it-- She didn't like these columns in red granite, polished, from which lipstick can be wiped off. Then, as to structure, the columns which extend through three floors are all precast on the ground with their reinforcing in them, and lifted into place. Two floors were poured on the ground. This is a lift-slab process, which just recently ended in disaster. Remember hearing about the lift slabs, wherever it was-- a building back East collapsed recently.

LASKEY

Yes, I do. There were a couple of incidents. One was in Texas, but the one I think you're talking about was in Philadelphia.

ALEXANDER

I thought it was more like Boston. But anyway, it was on the East Coast somewhere and it was a multistory building, I think maybe an apartment building, built by the lift-slab method. Well, the critical thing about the lift slab is that you must have every part of the slab go up evenly or it will rack. If one of them goes up slower than the rest, everything will start to tilt in that direction. And probably this is what happened in that disaster in the East. They probably built it on an area where the foundation was insecure and there was settling, or else they did not have the device that we had in this case which controls it by computer. So that if one part of the slab doesn't go up exactly the same as the rest, you're notified right away and you stop it until you jack it up.

LASKEY

This whole thing is lifted?

ALEXANDER

Yes, the whole thing. First there was a slab poured on the ground, then a slab poured on top of that, and then another slab poured on top of that--each with its reinforcing in it and with a separating membrane. They were poured around these columns, which had also been cast on the ground. And then the roof spans-- Well, you can see right here, from here to here is a free span, so that the top floor is very airy and light. Then another feature of the building is the north side of the building. They asked, of course, "What are you going to do about expansion of the plan?" And even though I hoped it would never happen, I said, "Okay, we'll just make this all glass, and since it's facing north, we can handle it. And we'll just bolt the frame to the building so that you can unbolt it and move it anytime you want." But then to prevent that from ever happening, I designed a garden in the back that is a little Truckee River, a sort of garden in which there is a ramp with steps in it, rocks and cobblestones. When water flows down on it, it flows over these little dams or ledges and over the rocks and goes down to a sort of channel that goes into a pool. I had Malcolm Leland design a fountain near the front staircase, which is a grand sort of affair, and also design a separation of the reading area in the outdoor north court, as well as a slab of steel about six inches thick with a design cut out of it with a torch to stand in the pool. And all of these things were placed on the working drawings rather than-- I knew if I asked for an appropriation for an artist or sculptor, they'd say forget it.

LASKEY

It's unnecessary.

ALEXANDER

Right. So I had all of these on working drawings, so the contractor bid for them. So they were included; no talking back. It was a $2 million budget, and it came in at $2 million, just under it. So everything worked perfectly. One reason everything worked perfectly, I found out later-- George Bissel was the name of the state architect. When he presented this design to the legislature or to the ways and means committee for their final nod on appropriation, he named me as the architect. The chairman of the ways and means committee turned out to be Ray Knisley, once manager of Baldwin Hills Village. And he said, "Oh, the greatest architect in the world!" He just went on like crazy. I hadn't the faintest idea he was in that position, but it helped no end. It helped the state architect. And it turned out that the state architect wasn't an architect, but he had the job of being state architect. I believe he was educated as an engineer. At least I heard this from some Nevada architects, who were very incensed that he was getting outside architects. He had a feud with the local architects, and it was their mistake to have such a feud, because he went outside for architects, both in the case of Neutra and Alexander and in my case. I guess he finally lost out. Well, in this case, I got very excited about the design, and I designed it quickly. I had to make the deadline. I personally made a model of it in the garage at home. I had pictures taken of the model and took them to John Entenza, who was publishing Art and Architecture. He said, "Why don't you get a good model maker?" I said, "I don't have the money." He said, "I like the design." He published it in spite of his objections. Finally when I did have a professional model made, it cost about $4,000.

LASKEY

I'm looking at Arts and Architecture. That's what we're looking at.

ALEXANDER

It is?

LASKEY

Is this your model?

ALEXANDER

I think so. Wait a minute. These drawings are not the model .

LASKEY

I assumed that this was the building.

ALEXANDER

Is this Arts and Architecture? Are you sure? It's big enough to be, yeah. Well, maybe he published it twice, because I don't think I did this good a job at all. I couldn't tell you. It is Arts and Architecture, isn't it?

LASKEY

Well, he could easily have published it twice. But I was going to say, that's quite a model, if in fact it is yours.

ALEXANDER

So we sent the model there so that it was on display. And the legislature referred to it as "the teahouse of the August moon." I don't know where they got that idea. I didn't think it was oriental, but--

LASKEY

Well, there was a movie with Marlon Brando, and the teahouse that he finally builds, there is a vague resemblance. I can see where they might have gotten that from.

ALEXANDER

Anyway, the greatest victory, in a way, was after the chief librarian resigned, he was replaced by a young man who had experience at two other universities. The University of California was one. In any event, it was his first chance to be head librarian. And he wrote me a letter that was very gratifying. He had entirely different ideas from his predecessor, yet he found that it was very simple under the circumstances to rearrange everything and get exactly what he wanted within the structure the way it was. So this made me feel very good. And also it was very much admired by SOM [Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill], which I hadn't expected.

LASKEY

Well, it seems to me that in doing the research on this I found out it was published in a number of places. A lot of references were made to it in architectural journals.

ALEXANDER

That's right. It was published in a Spanish publication, an architectural magazine in Spain. The basic grid was based on the fact that the standard library-shelf housing is 3 feet wide. And 7 times 3 is 21, and a column is apt to be about a 1 1/2 feet, so that the dimension center to center of columns was 22 1/2 feet in each direction. This adds up to almost exactly 500 square feet, so the two bays are 1,000 square feet. So I could calculate rather easily with this kind of a big module: there are 128 books per 3-foot-wide case, etc., etc. From this I could easily calculate something that would fit the program. Half of a column bay, like 250 square feet, was just about the right size for a conference room. Six 3s is 18 feet, and then a 3-foot aisle. And in the other direction, rows are 4 1/2 feet on center, in order to allow a 3-foot aisle and an 18-inch double stack--that is, with books on each side. And 22 1/2 is divisible by 4 1/2. Like what is it? Five bays? Yeah. So that's the arithmetic.

LASKEY

That's the way of the module. Were you given in the program a number of books?

ALEXANDER

The number of volumes to house, yeah. The American Library Association publishes standards, and it's based on experience and on the fact that you don't want to move the entire shelf of books in order to put one book back. It averages about 2 inches per book. But all the books aren't 2 inches. Let's see, 25 square feet per person into 500 square feet per bay--there are 20 people at tables.

LASKEY

In each of the bays?

ALEXANDER

Well, anyway, it was a very good exercise in dealing with numbers to arrive at a satisfaction of the program--in this case, in a simple cube.

LASKEY

Do you know if your garden is still there? Or has there been the need to expand?

ALEXANDER

Well, the last I heard, David Vhay, a friend of mine who was my associate on the site, called me at one time when they were talking about having an addition to the library in the form of a multistory building. And I suspect that's what they may have done. I just don't know.

LASKEY

They went up rather than out.

ALEXANDER

They wouldn't have gained enough by going out, in my opinion.

LASKEY

This roof line would have been lost?

ALEXANDER

No, it would be the opposite side, which was all glass. Well, it doesn't show a picture of it. But the opposite side of the building toward the garden, this is all steel and glass, the whole thing. There's no stone or anything like that. The ends of these folded plates show there, but that could have been extended. There's no reason why it couldn't have been. This is a loading dock, incidentally. That's the pool that has the steel plate in it. Here's Truckee River coming across to here. It is a delightful place. I don't know whether they use it that way or not . Oh, another thing I found. I was trying to find materials that were mined in Nevada to be used in the building so I could say, "This is a real Nevada building." Well, I found that there had been a marble quarry, but it was no longer in service, because they couldn't quarry the marble to compete with Italian marble, for instance. But I went up to see it and found there were some big chunks of marble with all the drill holes showing. In order to separate a big piece of marble, they'd drill long holes, so when it finally breaks away, you see these furrows. And so I included in the contract that the contractor was to get two of these pieces and set them in the garden. One of them, when I last saw it, was still there, and the other one had been used by someone in the sculpture department.

LASKEY

It became a master's thesis. [laughter] That's wonderful. So this was one of the first projects that you had after your breakup with Neutra?

ALEXANDER

Right.

LASKEY

And you must have felt rather good about it.

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes. I took slides before it was built and went back to New York on one trip and showed them to Doug [Douglas] Haskell at the Architectural Forum magazine. I asked him what he thought about it. He said, "I think it's a declaration of independence." I had done just about everything that I couldn't get Neutra to do.

1.23. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE ONE
MAY 11, 1987

ALEXANDER

One feature in the University of Nevada [at Reno] library is the pair of doors to the rare book room. I was searching for Nevada items to include. I had an idea, a very specific idea of a mural that I was recommending for the two-story lobby, which would recall somehow in abstract forms the silver-mining era of Nevada. Well, as I suspected, I never got a crack at any money to hire a good muralist. So it had been wise to include the sculpture in the working drawings. But one thing I did discover while I was looking for Nevada materials, or whatever, was that still crated somewhere on the campus was rumored to be a pair of doors that were replicas of the Ghiberti doors to the Duomo in Florence. It seems that at the beginning of the war, when everything in Florence and everything in Europe was in danger of being bombed, several impressions, several copies were made of the Ghiberti doors, and one of them was bought by a Vanderbilt, I don't know which, and given to the University of Nevada. And here they had them on the campus some place in crates, never having been exposed to view. So we uncrated the darn things and designed a place for them to be the doors to the entrance to the rare book collection. They're bronze, they're beautiful, and they're right out of ancient Florence.

LASKEY

They were actually made--

ALEXANDER

They were made in order to preserve these doors in case everything was bombed. There were several duplicates, and they were stashed in various places. And after the war they were on sale--that's my understanding of the story. Okay, you reminded me of a couple of extracurricular events that occurred. On several occasions I was asked to be on a jury. For instance--I forget what year it was--the jury of the worldwide international competition put on by the Aluminum Company of America [Alcoa] every year. This was early on in their program. And one of the members of the jury was Eero Saarinen. I had made an acquaintance with Eero at a national convention of architects at Minneapolis, I guess it was, at which his father [Eliel Saarinen] received the gold medal of the time during the proceedings there. He told me, for instance, about the competition for the National Park Service museum and visitor center in Saint Louis, which turned out to be the [Gateway] Arch that he submitted.

LASKEY

This was before the Arch.

ALEXANDER

But below the Arch. The program read as if it were a building housing a museum. And what he did was put the whole museum underground and put the Arch there as the gateway to the West as a symbol--a great idea for which he was justly famous. He told me about how both he and his father had entered the competition, and when a telegram arrived announcing the winner, they all assumed it was the father. They had a big celebration, a Finnish celebration, when the father appeared to have won. And then the next day they got the announcement that it was Eero, and then they had another celebration. Everybody got plastered and had a gay old time. Well, I was impressed. I had just gotten a fellowship myself, and I saw Eliel Saarinen get the gold medal. Then I said something to Eero about promoting [Richard J.] Neutra for the gold medal, and he told me to go easy on that. I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, he is very unpopular with some people and has not been very decent in some of his dealings, and it would be a failure at this time. Maybe at some other time it would work, but not now." Anyway, he was on the jury with me at the Alcoa thing in Washington, D.C., and I'll be damned if he didn't insist that I be chairman of the jury. Obviously, he was the person who should be. He came to this shell in Melbourne, Australia, aluminum-covered plywood supported by cables. And Eero was a cable enthusiast at the time, just having designed the skating rink at Yale [University] I think it was, where he had used cables for the first time.

LASKEY

This is '52?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. And we all agreed that that was a great new use of aluminum. However, he said, "Before we permeated this thing, let me call — " Was it Stravinsky in New York? A conductor. Who would it have been at that time? A famous conductor.

LASKEY

[Leopold] Stokowski .

ALEXANDER

Stokowski, pardon me, it was Stokowski. So he got on the horn right away and talked to Stokowski in New York City, who, he knew, had just performed in Melbourne under this shell, this music shell. He wanted to know whether the acoustics were right and so on and so forth before we permeated it, which I thought was pretty interesting. He got a very good report from Stokowski, and we named it number one. Eero, over a period of time, was very generous, helpful, and kind to me. Another extracurricular activity that leads into some of the work: I was asked to be on a jury of five to judge an international competition in Chicago for the redesign of the Loop .

LASKEY

Oh, really.

ALEXANDER

And this was put on by the famous department store that--

LASKEY

Marshall Fields?

ALEXANDER

Marshall Fields? No. It's housed in a building designed by [Louis H.] Sullivan.

LASKEY

Ah, Carson, Pirie, and Scott.

ALEXANDER

Carson, Pirie, and Scott, correct. Carson, Pirie, and Scott financed this competition. I guess I was the only plain old architect on the deal . They were mostly planners, such as Ladislas Segoe. Ladislas is a Hungarian, so I don't know how you spell it.

LASKEY

Well, what a great name.

ALEXANDER

And the one we elected chairman was at that time the head of the Ford Foundation. My influence on the thing-- Actually, everyone had their own idea of who the winner should be, and every one of the five of us was opinionated and--

LASKEY

Unwilling to bend.

ALEXANDER

Right. And the service I provided to the group was to get them to see that there were different reasons for each one wanting to permeate a certain design. They were perfectly valid, and each one had good valid reasons for that. And that actually there should be perhaps three winners, first, second, and third. And that we should decide as a group what is the most important criterion, and the second and the third important criterion, on which to base the judgment. We finally decided as a group that the dream, the image, was probably the number one important criterion in a competition of this kind. And second was the study of how it would work, and the third was the means of getting from here to there. And three of the five selections of first place were selected as first, second, and third on that basis.

LASKEY

You reached a consensus.

ALEXANDER

We reached a consensus by deciding that there were different ways of looking at it.

LASKEY

What was the plan that was selected?

ALEXANDER

That was a strange thing. It was a beautiful image. The selection was based on pictures of a model that were just exquisite. The play of light and shade on the whole thing was really terrific. And I figured, oh god, some other great big organization that needs a tax deduction must have won the damn thing. I got home before the actual winners were announced, and I found that the winners, instead of being SOM [Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill] or some other giant organization, were some students from Pratt Institute.

LASKEY

Really? That's pretty impressive.

ALEXANDER

They just had the spark of a dream that was really beautiful. And, of course, this was not a competition that resulted in someone getting a contract to design some particular thing. It was intended to inspire things to be done. Anyway, I thought that was a very good outcome from my standpoint. Well, this ties into the University of California, San Diego [UCSD] . There had been studies made by Pereira and Luckman of potential sites for the location of the expansion of the university. And there were to be three-- Was it more than three? Well, there were to be three entirely new sites in addition to the expansion of others, such as [University of California] Santa Barbara and [University of California] Riverside, into full university status. And I set my sights on getting one of those new campuses. I was especially interested in [University of California] Irvine, which was the closest to Los Angeles.

LASKEY

Just a second, Mr. Alexander. We're still talking early sixties, are we?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah, very early.

LASKEY

[William] Pereira and [Charles] Luckman were a team? I mean, they were a partnership at that time?

ALEXANDER

Not at that time. This breakup was almost identical to mine with Neutra.

LASKEY

Timewise?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. I remember going to talk it over with Bill Pereira several times. He claimed that his dissatisfaction was mainly due to the way the office was organized. That is, Luckman wanted a departmentalized organization in which one group would do all of the preliminary design, and it would pass on to another group and another group, so that no one group would be responsible for the whole thing. Whereas Bill wanted a team that would see the thing through all stages of development. Well, whether that was the whole story or not, I don't know. It certainly wasn't the whole story. Anyway, the work that they had done for the [University of California Board of] Regents on site selection had occurred in the late fifties. That is, it would be 1956 or something like that. And it got to be 1960, and I had my own office separate from Neutra at the time and had almost finished all of the work, Neutra and Alexander work, and was doing other things. I could see that this development of the Irvine Ranch, which was one of the designated sites for a new campus, which has become Irvine, was very attractive to me because it involved city planning among other things. I had been doing quite a bit of city planning, general plans for small cities and so on. I did the Escondido plan at that time, 1958, '59, or '60, somewhere in there. So I was very interested in the Irvine Ranch deal, because I could see that it could be not only the university, but designing the whole community around it. I thought, "Well, the university is probably not going to invest in the community around it. Maybe I can get a Ford Foundation grant for that." So I went plugging for that like a damn fool. I was very naive, I should say. I wasn't so foolish as I was naive, and if I was really going to be serious about a thing like that, I should have gone to the university first and said, "This is what I'd like to do. Do you have any objection?" and so on and so forth. Well, I'm sure that as soon as I went in to see the head of the Ford Foundation, with whom I'd become well acquainted at the design of the Loop in Chicago deal, he probably just called Clark Kerr, with whom he must have been intimately familiar. In any event, I was interested in getting the university started, and I didn't realize the way organizations of that kind work and how they must have been intimately connected. I never got any back talk on it, I never had anything backfire--in fact it probably did me good eventually. And sometime in the early sixties, maybe it was in 1960 in fact. Bill Pereira was selected for the Irvine campus and immediately got into the city planning around it, which he could do and did very well. Except that he had a splendid idea, a new idea-- Well, it was a damn good one. The problem with university work is that in order to spread the work, they insist on having a different architect for damn near every building, and they get a hodgepodge, which turns out to be what every city is. So that UCLA or Cal Berkeley [University of California, Berkeley] or any of them looks like what it is, a hodgepodge of different ideas and different people trying to show off to each other and make a name for themselves. It's understandable, but It's a mess. Bill had a very good idea to avoid that mess at the beginning, to get as many buildings as he could. If he would go into a joint venture with two other architectural firms, then instead of having each of these three firms design a building, they would all collaborate on ten buildings or whatever, you know. The whole damn thing was impossible. Well, from a crass commercial standpoint, that's the objective. But from a design standpoint it would be ideal. It's the way some universities in Canada and the United Kingdom have been designed: by one person and most of it at one time, so that it has some real cohesion and looks like a total harmonious whole. Well, anyway, I was not dismayed, and there was still one down here, which was UCSD. So I made it known that I was interested in that.

LASKEY

Now, was UCSD also a new campus? Certainly Irvine was brand-new. They created that out of nothing.

ALEXANDER

That was brand-new. In the case of UCSD, there had for many, many years been the oceanographic-- What do you call it?

LASKEY

Oh, Scripps.

ALEXANDER

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, SIO. That was an organization separate and distinct. The head of that was Roger [R.] Revelle, who is just a magnificent individual, who if he had an appointment at four o'clock in the afternoon with so-and-so, whom he'd never met, and the guy came in and he became interested in the guy, he'd be there until midnight and everybody else could go fry. [laughter] He was a fascinating guy himself and was fascinated in individuals and ideas and so on, and as a result he was not an organization man. But he should have been chancellor. He had already built SIO, which was then being converted into an engineering school as well as oceanographic. He already had sixteen members of the National Academy of Sciences on his faculty and three or four Nobel Prize winners in this little enclave down there ready for this to become a university. And one multistory building had been built there in anticipation, I guess, before it was anointed as a university campus. Every pueblo that was established under Spanish rule had a grant from the king of Spain as common land, and in every case but San Diego this treasure had been squandered by one city council after another, after there were city councils. They would sell off the land to just avoid raising the tax rate or whatever. And Los Angeles's original land grant was a square thing in the middle with a pueblo--what do you call it?--plaza in the middle of it. Every speck of that had been squandered by one city council after another. In the case of San Diego, they still had a thousand acres or more of pueblo lands, and they had a vote of the people to give it to the University of California if the university would settle in La Jolla, which is part of San Diego. So that site was determined in part by that feature, and also by the adjacency of SIO, which was then incorporated into it. And the old camino real went right up the middle of the campus site, where the original Franciscan fathers had tramped with their burros. This site contained at one time a Marine Corps camp. It included a very large plantation of eucalyptus trees that had been planted by an early Santa Fe chief, with the expectation of making a mint by using them for railroad ties. And then it turned out that eucalyptus wood isn't worth a damn for railroad ties. But, anyway--

LASKEY

They're awfully pretty.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Well, I went around and visited two or three regents to kind of get an idea of what some of them were thinking. Everyone turns out to be different. I did find that they were all important, busy people and rich, and that they valued their time. And I was warned by somebody not to become garrulous in making any presentation to them. Anyway, I finally made the short list of being invited to appear with-- Let's see, [A. Quincy] Jones and [Frederick E.] Emmons and myself and Frank Hope, Jr., of San Diego and Victor Gruen and somebody else. Oh, [Douglas] Honnold and [John] Rex. I think we were the five. And it became clear why Carl [C.] McElvy called me and asked if I could guarantee that if I were asked to do a big job for the university, I could guarantee that Neutra would not be involved.

LASKEY

He really did.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, well, I mentioned that before. The interviews were held on the UCLA campus in the boardroom. It was interesting to me that, I guess, half of the personnel-- each one came with help. There would be two or three representatives of the firm. Emmons was a Cornell [University] man; I was; my associate. Bob [Robert] Pierce; Doug Honnold; and somebody else, I think. There were so damn few Cornell architectural graduates in California, it was quite remarkable to me. Victor Gruen had already retired from the firm [Victor Gruen and Associates] and had been in Europe, but for this occasion he came back to help them. Victor flew back from Austria, and he preceded me. We were told that we would have-- I think it was a total of thirty minutes, like twenty minutes for presentation and ten minutes for questions and answers. I don't know whether that was exactly it, but Victor Gruen preceded me. He and somebody else went in there, and they stayed almost an hour and then came out. I went in, and I was able to show ten slides and talk about each one. And I was able to say, "This presentation has taken nine minutes and ten seconds. Are there any questions?" And that was just what they wanted. So they had plenty of questions. One thing I didn't mention. Saint John's [College], before this time, had decided their form of education was like a typewriter: When you want to expand it, you can't expand the institution where it is--it's not expandable. But you can have lots of other typewriters all around the country. So they were going to have ten campuses or something like that. Well, they actually managed to get one, which was at Santa Fe. But in the process, they were very interested in California. The president of the college, [Richard D.] Weigle, came out to me to seek some guidance out here. And I was, well, I guess I was already involved as consulting architect to the Claremont Colleges as part of their consulting team. I suggested that it was just ideal as another college in the Claremont college chain, because each one had a different goal, a different method of education, and the difference would be welcomed by the group. And it was indeed. The head of the graduate school there, who is the head of the whole group, was more than interested. Well, it turned out that the faculty of Saint John's, when they heard of the idea, thought that they would be overshadowed by this group. They wanted a very separate and very distant-- So they turned that one down. I suggested the Riverside inn, that crazy Mission Inn. It was for sale at the time. That would have been quite a campus for them.

LASKEY

That would have been a very interesting use of that building, which has been essentially empty since then. I think they are restoring it right now.

ALEXANDER

The regents had heard about Saint John's. I had shown a picture of Saint John's College, which I had been involved in. And one of them wanted to know why was it that they didn't choose me to design their college when they came out West, at Santa Fe. And I'd already found out why, and that was, as I said, "Frankly, the architect who had been selected to design that was the one who gave them the property free and clear." He said, "Well, you can't beat that." Anyway, I had an answer for everything they asked, fortunately, and I was selected. And the first thing was to design a long-range development plan.

LASKEY

I don't think we talked about it. You were submitting to design the whole campus, or you were just going to design--?

ALEXANDER

No, the selection was for a consultant to the regents.

LASKEY

Consultant to the regents.

ALEXANDER

Consulting architect for the campus. They had a custom which I was told worked that way. They would engage a consulting architect for the campus who would advise them first of all. For new campus or expansion he would develop a long-range development plan. He would at all times have a building to design on the campus. But he would involve other architects in other buildings and would make recommendations to the regents on that. All of this would be done with a campus planning committee headed by the chancellor of the particular campus in question. I signed a contract to develop a long-range development plan. I went down there to stay, and then I was offered-- Roger Revelle by that time had been passed up as the chancellor. He would have made a marvelous one. He was the one who put this terrific faculty together. He was living then in Washington, D.C., in Georgetown, in an eighteen- foot-wide town house. I think he was working for the World Health Organization on population control worldwide, something like that. In any event, the chancellor selected was Herb York. Herbert York had been the head of the Lawrence [Livermore National] Laboratory.

LASKEY

Oh, the Lawrence Livermore labs.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, right. He had then been selected as Pentagon science adviser to the President. A wonderful guy from my standpoint, in spite of his involvement with the military and so forth. In any event, he was the chancellor. I went down there and stayed-- Oh, I know what I was going to say. Roger Revelle offered me his La Jolla house to stay in. So my family and I went down there and just lived there, and I pretty soon knew the land given to the university better than anybody else. Herb York in one meeting of the campus planning committee said, "Hey, I just discovered something I 'll bet nobody in the planning committee knows. There's a tablet in the middle of Highway 1." which ran right through the campus at that time. "There's a monument there. Who knows what it says?" Nobody knew except that I did. It was a memorial to, I forget the details now, but some man named [Louis] Rose for whom Rose Canyon was named. He was an early pioneer there. Well, these three campuses were not permitted, the three architects or architectural teams were not permitted to talk to each other. I was not supposed to talk to Bill Pereira about what he was doing, and he was not supposed to talk to a group up at [University of California] Santa Cruz on what they were doing. But it was agreed that the monstrous effect of a conglomerate like the Berkeley campus or the UCLA campus was somehow to be avoided and that other ideas were welcome. That was about the way it was. As it turned out, Santa Cruz, for which there were several people involved as the architectural team, went for something similar to an Oxford idea of having residential colleges, in which those interested in sociology would be living together and studying together and so forth. I don't know exactly what Bill Pereira's concept was, but it was very much oriented in form to a circle, and he made references to European examples, which I did too later. I found that there was a critical mass of faculty that would attract other faculty of high stature and caliber. That is, mathematicians want to talk to other mathematicians; they want to be close to them. I found out by asking the faculty members in this campus planning group what they considered to be the minimum number of faculty of a certain branch of learning that should be together a certain place, and how many students they could handle, in effect--not that any one particular college would be devoted to that one thing. But this gave me a clue that a college of 2,500 people could support a curriculum. [pause] Let's see, was it the college that could? I'd have to refer to my plan on that. But it was something like 2,500 students who could get a complete offering such as that given at UCLA or Berkeley, in a cluster of four such colleges. In other words, there would be four colleges in a cluster that would offer among the four colleges everything you could get at UCLA or Berkeley, and each college would be limited to 2,500. If it were a four-year program, a quarter of that is a recognizable student body, so that somebody might get to know almost everybody in his class. And then I developed a plan in order to get up to 27,500 students, which was the objective. That was based on the 25,000 that UCLA and Berkeley were at one time, and when they were talking about expanding they said, "Well, let's add 10 percent." Because both campuses reached 27,500 by the time we were getting down to cases. Well, that became the mystic number, and it took three clusters of four colleges each to develop this 27,500. Each cluster could support a branch undergraduate library, and there would be a central library that would handle the graduate in-depth big library system.

LASKEY

Now, that wouldn't be part of one of the four buildings in the cluster.

ALEXANDER

It has nothing to do with buildings. Each college of 2,500 would have several buildings in it. And then the clusters would be close enough so that they could all go to an undergraduate library that would serve the four groups, or the three, I can't think of the numbers exactly now. There would be the central library and certain other central facilities that would be common to the entire ultimate university, but each of these clusters would act, in effect, like a separate university. When you break it down to the 2,500 in a college, you would have a manageable student body that would not be as awesome as UCLA or Berkeley are to many people. In search of this formula, I illustrated a scattering of little colleges all over the place of a certain size. They had no form, they didn't mean anything educationally, they were just like warts or measles. There was no cohesion or concept that was related to the facts of life in academia. The big amorphous Berkeley or UCLA type was also ruled out by the planning committee. With the good editorship of an architect in the architectural office in Berkeley who worked with me on it, I wrote personally and turned out a very good report, very well illustrated. And that was probably the best report at that time of any of the campuses, I believe. When it came to a presentation, we had set up on one of the ground floors of one of the buildings that existed there already plywood pylons, on which I'd tacked all of the sketches that led up to the final plan proposed by the university. All the thinking was laid out there so that you could go behind the scenes and see what led up to it. And the regents had a chance to wander through this maze of stuff and see how the ideas had developed. Then I put on a presentation that was a knockout, and I was told with authority by everybody that it was the best presentation that they had seen. And I really was getting along famously. I was probably insufferable to live with at times. And then, true to their tradition, they awarded contracts to me for the first residence halls and the first dining hall facility, which also included general services for this new campus.

1.24. TAPE NUMBER: XII, SIDE TWO
MAY 11, 1987

ALEXANDER

I made a tour of residence halls in other campuses. And virtually every case was the same, whether the building was a thirteen-story building as those in Berkeley were, or a two-story building as I found in Stanford [University] or UC Santa Barbara, which looked attractive and humane from the outside. You'd go inside and you'd find that the plumbing facilities were clustered in one location, so that as you went in you were confronted by a battery of urinals, and everybody was shaving at the same time in the same place in the morning. You could drop a cherry bomb down the stairway and start a riot. The noises were fantastically loud and there was obviously no place to study. Everybody went to the library to study because it was impossible to hear yourself think in these crazy places. I was determined to do something entirely different from that. I was invited, meantime, to go back to Cornell and teach for ten weeks, or whatever it was, some time or other. And as a problem, a project for the class, I gave this dormitory situation. So I had a chance to think for several weeks--it may have been only four weeks, I don't know. I had a chance to think about it and work with them on the concept of getting a humane environment. Out of this came a cluster of four-story high buildings, walk-ups without elevators in which no more than ten students lived together in five rooms off of a hall serving six rooms. The sixth room was a residential-style bathroom, so that ten students were using that one bathroom. And each pod, you might say, housing ten students was separated from another by half a flight of stairs. So there was no way that you could get this riot effect and this mass effect that you get in other buildings of the kind. Well, I submitted that to Progressive Architecture for their annual contest for buildings not yet built. And it won a prize. They published it, as a result of which I could pass tear sheets around to the regents. It was very impressive.

LASKEY

So you submitted it to Progressive Architecture before you submitted it to the regents?

ALEXANDER

No, no. I got their approval of the preliminary design, but before it was built I submitted it to Progressive Architecture. And one of the contest objectives was to improve the chances of something that's new and different being built. Well, anyway, they decided to build only half of my "village" at a time. There were only three buildings like this that were built finally, instead of the six, so it didn't have quite the impact I intended. But it did result in something that I would have done even more today if I had the opportunity. I widened the hallway for these six rooms slightly, put a balcony at one end, and that became a common sitting room. It would have been better if it had been even wider than I made it. The balcony has surfboards and that kind of thing hanging on it at the moment. I do believe that it resulted in something that became a model throughout -- SECOND PART MAY 12, 1987

LASKEY

When we finished yesterday, you had been talking about the residence halls, and you were going to begin today talking about the dining facility at the University of California, San Diego.

ALEXANDER

As originally conceived, it was, I believe, called a general services building because this was a new campus and the building was to house a great many functions. But the principal one and the one that interested me most was the dining facility. As I went around the state and elsewhere looking at university housing, I looked at the dining facilities at the same time. And it was typical at the time that there would be, say, a unit housing eight hundred students and there would be a cafeteria for eight hundred students, an amorphous, enormous place which, even if it were subdividable by folding partitions--which was usually the case, so that you could have a meeting in one space--the ceiling was eleven feet high and it stretched endlessly. I would feel ill at my stomach going in to eat in a place like that. Probably the worst example I can think of did not have an eleven- foot ceiling, but the Air Force Academy has a dining hall that ends all dining halls, just simply enormous. But that does have a high ceiling. However, I decided that there were two different ways to look at the dining situation: One, it would be very nice to have some intimate spaces. They could just be closed off from the balance or they could simply be sort of alcoves with low ceilings and a small seating capacity. But there should be occasions, especially in a great university, for a really sort of monumental place where the nature of the room would have some effect on the dining habits of the students who ate there, and where it would be quite appropriate to have a raised platform at one end with a speaker or a table with a dozen or more presenting a roundtable discussion, you might say, in front of students who were at a banquet for a more or less formal occasion. So I divided the program, which called for eight hundred people to be seated at once, into two sections, or really three. But I set aside four hundred to be in a formal dining hall and then two groups of two hundred each to be in smaller dining halls, which would have alcoves and very low ceilings. For the formal hall I designed a space that had a twenty-five- foot-high ceiling. Well, all schematic or preliminary plans are sent to Sacramento by the university, along with the description of the program and the need that is to be filled, the justification, and what has been proposed. And the news came back at one meeting of the campus planning committee that our dining hall with the twenty-five-foot ceiling was holding up the entire parade of the university work in the legislature, and that we would have to lower the ceiling to eleven feet or find private funds to make the difference. So I immediately got my structural engineer to estimate the difference in cost, and I asked the chancellor in a meeting of the planning committee for a hunting license to go out after the money, which he was glad to give me. Well, let's see, there was some admonition-- I just don't recall that now. In any event, the first place I turned to right after leaving the meeting, which ended let's say at four o'clock in the afternoon-- I went to see Carlos Tovares. He was a very interesting guy who was a partner in a partnership of two who had proposed to develop the land around the university. I'd been working with him--with full knowledge of the university--in planning housing around the university. Carlos was born in Macao, a very short distance from Hong Kong, of Portuguese and Chinese descent. He had been a world-class soccer player. He was a very imaginative engineer. Most people don't realize that vast areas of Los Angeles are protected from a flood by two major features in the San Fernando Valley. One is a debris basin below Tujunga Canyon, and the other is the Sepulveda Dam. When there is enough water to make that much difference, they will permit the Sepulveda Dam to hold the water back and cover what is now a park where there are riding trails and all kinds of athletic facilities, but no private structures. He had obtained a contract to build that dam, and it has some interesting engineering features. He was--

LASKEY

Excuse me just a second. I'm trying to place that. Would that be the Van Norman Dam in the Sepulveda Basin?

ALEXANDER

No.

LASKEY

In that same area.

ALEXANDER

The Van Norman dams, I thought, were containing water that came from the Owens Valley.

LASKEY

They are, but they are in the Sepulveda area.

ALEXANDER

You know where Sepulveda Boulevard is and the San Diego Freeway? The Ventura Freeway passes the dam that I am talking about. It's right next to it. I believe Sepulveda Boulevard, which is now replaced by the San Diego Freeway, I think that also passes it. I think it's on the northwest corner of that intersection of the two freeways. His engineering interest at the time that I knew him regarding UCSD was the designing of a successful tunnel under the British Channel, which had been proposed since the time of Napoleon, but was opposed by the British because it would make it possible for an army to come by land instead of by sea. He actually worked with a famous — Carstairs, I think his name was, in England on a formal proposal to build that tunnel. In any event, getting back to Carlos, as I say, he was an imaginative guy. I explained what I wanted. I knew he knew the people in San Diego well, and I said, "Where should I turn for the difference?" which was a modest $10,000 or something like that. And he said, "Well, you've got your donor right here, providing you make it anonymous." So I thanked him very much, and before six o'clock I was at the chancellor's door at his home, knocked on his door and said, "You owe me a drink. I have the money, but it's anonymous." "Fine." So I had a bronze plaque made as part of the contract for the building, which said, "This roof has been raised twelve feet by a private anonymous donor." The plaque has since been ripped off the wall by some student. It was bolted in, but you know how students are.

LASKEY

Would there have been any conflict of interest had you decided to use his name? Since he was developing in the area, would that have created a problem?

ALEXANDER

Well, I don't think so. I did tell the head of the A and E [architects and engineers] office there, and I'm pretty sure the chancellor knew. He just didn't want his name used. He was pretty modest in lots of ways.

LASKEY

You got your twenty-five-foot roof.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Another idea I had regarding that was-- I think the east wall had some windows very high, but the lower portion was a solid wall because the plan was ultimately to put a theater backing up to it on the other side.

LASKEY

Of the dining facility?

ALEXANDER

Right. And I proposed a mural for this big wall, which would be the obvious place for a dais or a platform for some formal occasion. I also proposed that the mural be-- Gosh, a Santa Barbara artist. [I] just don't think of his name now, but he was the one who ultimately painted the mural for that wall. [Howard] Warshaw. I think he's since passed away. He was somebody I'd known in Santa Barbara. He was eloquent as well as a good artist.

LASKEY

With your twenty-five-foot ceiling, what style were you working in? Was it a curve?

ALEXANDER

No, the ceiling was coffered--you know what that is--with pretty deep coffers.

LASKEY

So it was a pretty formal room.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Glass on both sides and a broad overhang. I believe there were just four columns supporting this roof, and it had the effect of a pavilion, let's say, glass on two sides, blank wall on one side, an entrance to the kitchen and service area, and the entrances to the two smaller dining halls, one of which I think has now been turned into a bookstore.

LASKEY

I was going to ask you, because you said you made two rooms, as I understand it, to serve four hundred--

ALEXANDER

Two rooms of two hundred each.

LASKEY

Two rooms of two hundred each.

ALEXANDER

Plus one of four hundred.

LASKEY

And one of four hundred. So the two rooms of two hundred each, what were they like?

ALEXANDER

Well, the thing that tied that whole thing together was a series of columns with an arch form going four ways. What would you call it? I forget. Arches going out four ways from the column -- a vaulted ceiling. It was like a series of mushrooms if you're under the mushroom.

LASKEY

Did it open onto patios? What kind of landscaping was there?

ALEXANDER

Well, there was sort of a plaza on each side, places to sit down, and the one on the south led to some steps down to the area that contained the cluster of three buildings that constituted the Revelle residence halls.

LASKEY

How did it work?

ALEXANDER

I think it worked beautifully. And I think I've only eaten in the room with the tall ceiling. I could see how the others would work. I do think the atmosphere had an effect on people's decorum or behavior. I don't know if it's ever been used on formal occasions as I'd imagined.

LASKEY

Now, was there an overall design plan or style for UCSD?

ALEXANDER

I'll tell you what my concept was, which was very, very popular at the time. I envisioned each college having its own general approach to design. I used examples from Europe. For instance, San Gimignano is an Italian hill town that from a little distance is simply a cluster of tall, thin towers. That's not talking about a style. I hate the word style because it usually connotes some rigid, formal, eclectic thing from the past, and I was just talking about form in general. One would be a series of towers, which could be derived from any number of programs. Another one might be based on-- [I] wish I had my little book right now. I could run down a whole list of examples that I gave. Well, I gave European examples of striking forms. One of them was a little walled area, sort of compound, with semicircular walls. Damn it, I wish I had this thing with me which I had up in Berkeley.

LASKEY

It's up in Berkeley? That's too bad. Is it something relating specifically to your work?

ALEXANDER

Yeah.

LASKEY

I was going to say that maybe I have something here that could help you.

ALEXANDER

The report that I made on the long-range development plan suggested certain formal ways to go, one for each college, and it also suggested a flowering tree different for each college. And I think that answers your question.

LASKEY

I think your comments about style are interesting. Because I think that in a lot of your work, you do make references to the past. We mentioned early in the interview that your training at Cornell included the beaux-arts training and that in the sixties, when there was the choice between the International style and maintaining references, at least, to the classical past, you tended to use those references.

ALEXANDER

Well, not only the training in school, but especially the three months that I spent in Europe in 1930 in the summer. I saw just about everything that was worth seeing in France, Spain, and Italy. And unfortunately as I grow older, my memory for names and so forth is not as good as it used to be, so I can't just rattle it off the way I could at one time. In any event, part of the enthusiasm of the regents over my report on a long-range development plan was due to evoking memories that they had of having seen these very examples that I mentioned as prototypes or as examples of forms that would be used in one college after the other. While we're talking about that, I might mention that the Chancellor, Herb York, was simply delighted with the results and with the praise from the regents and all that sort of thing. We had what he called a dog and pony show. We took it around to anybody who wanted to know about the plans for the new campus. We went together. I had to attend every regents' meeting with him, because at every meeting we had some new building under consideration and I made the presentation on these. Herb is, I'm sure, still an enthusiastic booster. Meantime, however, especially regarding my presentation of the long-range development plan, I made a jealous enemy in Bill Pereira.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Well, he was the darling of the regents up to then, as far as his proposal for the long-range development plan for Irvine. Instead of showing his jealousy at once he saw me at one of these regents ' meetings and tried to take full credit for my having been chosen by the regents to do the work.

LASKEY

How did he do that?

ALEXANDER

He claimed to have been completely responsible because he recommended me. But subsequent events proved to me that I really got under his skin. We'll get to that later.

LASKEY

Because it seems like such a shame and so totally unnecessary.

ALEXANDER

Well, shall we go on then? One major project was being proposed while the residence halls and the general services building were practically completed. Since I had been told by the regents that their policy was that the consulting architect might be kept busy with some work for them at all times, I thought, well, I'd be very much interested in the big job that was coming up, which was the first phase of the [School] of Medicine. The person in charge of the architectural and engineering office of the university on the campus was not an architect nor an engineer, he was an educator by the name of [J. W.] Tippetts. We just got along famously up to a point of having presented the long- range development plan and so forth. And he considered himself fortunate, as he said, because he was dealing with me as the principal rather than, as in the other cases of the universities-- Bill Pereira would normally have one of his employees in charge, and Tippetts's colleagues in other campuses were dealing with employees of the head of the firm instead of the head of the firm. So that was just fine as long as it worked. However, I found that Tippetts thought that I was not equal to handling something like-- [tape recorder off] Well, Tippetts was convinced that I was not equal to the design of a medical facility or a science facility. He was determined that I wouldn't do the job. I mean, he was not going to recommend it. And in the course of time I became convinced that the reason he was so adamant about this was that another firm was promising him some high reward if they got the job. This may have simply been my paranoia dealing with this great big organization. I must say that he did not appear to be that kind of a guy, but in any event, I became convinced of that. I saw Welton Becket and Bill Pereira and god knows who else going after large work with the regents and dealing with them personally. So I set out to do likewise, and I didn't know of any rule that I shouldn't see the regents. I was supposed to be their adviser, and also I had their confidence. So I saw one after the other, personally, and told them of my interest. One of them. Bill [William E.] Forbes of the music company in Los Angeles, said, "You know the president. President Kerr, is interested. He takes more than a usual interest in this building. Why don't you go see him." So I made an appointment to see him. I covered the whole schmear of every regent and the president of the university. When it came to the regents ' meeting at which the decision was made, I was not there. I was in my office in Los Angeles, and I got a call that I'd been selected to do this job. The next thing I got was a call from the vice president in charge of business, Elmo Morgan. He was in San Diego at the time. He said, "I must see you. I'm coming up tomorrow. May I see you for lunch?" I said, "Absolutely. I'd be delighted." So I took him to the California Club, and he told me the news, which I did not realize-- I had no way to judge the impact of what he was saying and really didn't get the whole story until later as things developed. The story was that when it came time for selecting an architect for the new college of medicine, a report was read from the campus planning committee, recommending I don't know whom, but recommending against my selection, specifically. Furthermore, Clark Kerr got up and made a recommendation against my being selected, in spite of which the regents selected me over the objection of the president and the campus planning committee. Well, I said to Elmo Morgan, "That's a hell of a situation. I'd be delighted to get out of this one. Just drop me." He said, "We can't possibly do that. The regents are the regents, and they've selected you. You've got to proceed." He promised me, "I will see that you are not thrown to the wolves." Well, that's not the way it happened. I was thrown to the wolves, as you can imagine.

LASKEY

In what way? What happened? It must have been horrendous .

ALEXANDER

Well, everything happened. In the first place, the Chancellor, Herb York, announced his resignation, and there was a long period before anyone was selected to replace him. And during that time--

LASKEY

But that wasn't related to your--

ALEXANDER

No, but he did ask me in and-- "How dare you go to my boss without talking to me." I said, "That never occurred to me. It was Regent Forbes who suggested it." "Oh, a regent, okay." He was still friendly and is still today. But during this hiatus when he had announced his resignation and said he would stay in office until somebody was to replace him, I had a hell of a time. But I had a much worse time when they appointed somebody. Instead of appointing a new chancellor, they appointed two people. York told me that the reason he resigned was that he found by experience that in his former positions he was very comfortable in working with things. In this job he had to work with people, and he was not comfortable working with people; that's a simple explanation. Well, they selected a historian, I think from the UCLA campus, a professor, as the official chancellor. But they also appointed a new position, which was vice-chancellor for business for this particular campus, who had been a vice president of a nearby firm that did nothing but work for the Pentagon. I forget the name of the joint- -right up on the campus practically. [General Dynamics] Anyway, from the word go, his mission was to disarm me and get me thrown out.

LASKEY

Who was this? Do you remember his name?

ALEXANDER

No, it's in history.

LASKEY

We can find it.

ALEXANDER

It wasn't that he had any animosity against me, but I was a threat to the organization because of my popularity with the regents. The local administration could not stand it. Meantime, I went ahead designing the building and my plan and presentation. Oh, incidentally, Clark Kerr had sought a consulting architect to see that I wouldn't make terrible mistakes and to put me right. Somebody who had lots of experience on medical facilities.

LASKEY

Why did he do this?

ALEXANDER

Obviously because he had no confidence in my ability. This is ridiculous to me. But he's not an architect, he doesn't know what it takes. I presume that most people think that there ' s no such thing as an architect who can analyze a program, whatever it is, and do a good job. Some people have an idea that there must be a school architect, there must be a hospital architect, there must be a this, that, and the other. And if you haven't designed a hundred of these things in your career-- And the trouble is you may have designed a hundred of these things, but you never designed one for Wilshire Boulevard or something like that. There's always something like that. Well, anyway, the consulting architect came all the way from Minneapolis/Saint Paul. I asked my brother [Harold Alexander] , who was then vice president of Libby Owens Ford, about him, and he said, "Yeah, we call him a bottom- drawer architect." In other words, he's done so many of these things, he doesn't think anymore. He just pulls something out of the bottom drawer that he's done before.

LASKEY

Do you remember his name?

ALEXANDER

Oh, no. It's a famous name in the field, but I just don't know right now. Anyway, his organization was of some help, but not much. What he wanted immediately was to do all the working drawings. I could be responsible for the design, and he would do the working drawings. I refused to do that, in spite of urgings from the campus, Tippetts and so forth, that this is the only way to go. They thought I couldn't handle this thing. Well, it's ridiculous because--

1.25. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE ONE
MAY 12, 1987

LASKEY

Why did you find the idea of separating, you doing the design and their doing the working drawings--?

ALEXANDER

Well, I believe in an architect seeing everything through, including construction review from the start to the finish. That's an architect's job, as far as I'm concerned, and I just wouldn't tolerate it for a minute. I thought it was really ridiculous to think that I couldn't handle a thing like that. Because this was not a hospital, which is more technical than what I was doing. The basic science building was a series of laboratories, biology laboratories really, and was not a highly technical hospital. The whole program was fascinating, and I'm very good at analyzing programs and producing a building or buildings as a result. Anyway, in addition to all the rigmarole of having a consultant and so forth, a group of us from the campus went on two trips, to the East and on the West Coast, visiting colleges of medicine. I think there must have been, well, at least a dozen that we visited, making notes and commenting. Each one had some specialty of which they were proud. Einstein University outside of New York, in Long Island I think, had a closed-circuit TV, so that instead of having an anatomy class in which the students were grouped in an amphitheater- -which is the traditional vision we have of medical schools, and in which the student can hardly see exactly what ' s going on on the operating table down below him--they had a closed-circuit TV. So they could see-- For instance, when there was a foot specialist that was, well, taking the foot apart if it was an autopsy, they could see everything that went on right up close. They also had a series of rooms in which a group of four could get together for studying purposes. It seems that the custom of teaching anatomy in medical schools resulted in pairs and groups of four working on a cadaver at the same time, because each half of the body is similar to the other half. So they not only studied anatomy, but many other things in groups of four. I was told that was their idea.

LASKEY

This is the Einstein school?

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and then there was Case Western Reserve [University] .

LASKEY

Oh, in Ohio, Cleveland.

ALEXANDER

Their shtick was that every freshman medical student was given a patient the day he arrived. But it's not a sick patient; it's a pregnant lady to follow through her pregnancy. So that he learns in a healthy way about the doctor-patient relationship. That was their prime thing. Then Stanford [University] had a multidiscipline laboratory. It seems that in many medical schools students go from one specialist place to another. A specialist has his own laboratory and students go there for that thing, and then they go to another one. The students roam all around. Instead of that, there would be a laboratory for the students to stay right there where they were, and the professors would rotate around.

LASKEY

Oh, that's kind of interesting.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, so that was called a multidiscipline laboratory. Well, each institution had something different to be proud of. Meantime, I was discussing the project with the only people I could talk to about this thing. The dean of medicine had been selected, and he came from Honolulu. He was a very young man. He had never been a dean of medicine before anywhere, and he had his own particular ideas of where to go. For instance, he was convinced-- Well, he knew that students of medicine very often ended up in research or they ended up as general practitioners or whatever. Only a handful or a very small number of them ever became surgeons. Now, a surgeon, admittedly, had better go through a few autopsies or go through lots and lots of cadavers. That's okay. But he didn't see any sense for the other guys, who were going to become pediatricians or psychiatrists or whatever. They could be taught all they needed to know from models, which had progressed to a point where they were very, very refined. However, there was hardly anybody else to talk to. There was one other person with a medical degree. I think his name was Hamburger, a professor of what, I don't remember. Then, otherwise, I had to talk to people who were in biology. We were operating in that kind of vacuum, I would call it, with quite a different situation from having a medical faculty to talk to about their needs and so forth. It was an abstract performance. I, in some distress, went to Welton Becket, who was the architect of the entire UCLA complex. And it had been a lifetime bread- and-butter thing; they kept building and building there. He took me into his office and showed me a stack of books about a foot high, each one an inch or an inch and a half thick. These were the programs of various buildings there. Every room and its requirements and its electric outlets and everything was spelled out. He said, "I wouldn't touch a pencil to paper until you had a program like this." Well, I took them down and showed them to [J. W.] Tippetts, and he said, "You'll never get a program like that ever. There's nobody here that can do that. There's no one here who knows what we want." So what are you going to do? Meantime, I had been requested to go to Germany by the Federal Republic [of Germany] through their consul, along with four other people from around the country. At their expense and request, I was to go over for a month in Germany.

LASKEY

How did that come about?

ALEXANDER

I don't know. I was making a scene in Los Angeles --people knew me and so forth. The common denominator of the people who went was city planning, and they were to show me Germany. We were not to write a report; we had no obligation. Except when we got over there, I found that the only thing we had to pay, you might say, in compensation was several trips to the [Berlin] Wall, to explain their point of view about the wall. That's about the only thing we had to-- But every place we went there was a schedule. Every five minutes was accounted for, a typical German way to go about it.

LASKEY

Very German.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was a fascinating trip. I could care less about what was going on back here. I had my people in the office to take care of whatever they could. But I saw to it that every time I got anywhere near a college of medicine in Germany, I went to visit it. For instance, before I left I talked to campus people about what I might see in Germany that would help in the design of the college of medicine. I said, "Well, how about [University of] Heidelberg? I've heard about that as interesting and as having a good college of medicine." They said, "That's old hat, way, way back." Well, I went out there nevertheless. And I found that, little did they know, an entirely new campus was under construction, some of it occupied, down the river and across the river from old ancient Heidelberg. It was a fantastic new campus, which I found in several other places in Germany, but this one had their college of medicine in operation. One of the really outstanding things I found there was the section that made models. For instance, they would take the heart of a deer, inject it with two colors. The artery side would be one and the venous side would be the other, blue and red. And then after the plastic had hardened, they would put it in a pot of boiling water, or whatever it was, to eat away--or maybe it was in some acid--to eat away the flesh, leaving nothing but the arterial and venous system of the heart, just a gorgeous thing. All of the little capillaries and veins and so forth were there in plastic. Many other things that I saw them do gave me some insight into what a medical- illustration section should be and could do. Well, they were building new campuses all over Germany. Most of them were quite tight-knit, well unified, the kind of thing you might expect--but I didn't expect it-- in a bitter cold country in the wintertime, where you don't want to go from building to building the way you might in Southern California. You were in a megastructure, in effect.

LASKEY

Now, again, just to put this in time, this was in the mid-sixties?

ALEXANDER

Yes, I think it was probably '64 or '65 or something like that. Okay, I came back.

LASKEY

Did you get ideas from this visit? Did your whole plan begin to clarify in your mind?

ALEXANDER

Well, among the many things that were mentioned as items that might be housed in this thing were a full- body counter in which the entire radioactive content of a human body could be analyzed, instead of finding a spot where it might be, or you'd have to analyze the whole body: how much have you been exposed to radioactivity by what you eat, by just living today, by living in 1980 or 1965 or whatever. And I found in some school of medicine one of these things, which I'd heard of but I'd never seen. And it's quite an interesting experience to get in a great big drawer and have them close the drawer with you in it, and you're in there for a little while and then they pull you out. I found that in order to get an appropriate reading they had gone out to the Battle of Jutland site. The Battle of Jutland was a World War I battle between England and the Germans in which a great many ships were sunk. They took one of these naval vessels up and used the steel from it, because it would have virtually no radioactivity compared to 1965. That was just a point of interest. But what I designed for the basic science building, which was the five-story — Maybe it was seven. It was planned to be seven ultimately. Anyway, a multistory building. I planned a center slot that went from the ground to the heavens, some sixteen feet wide and the full length of the building, with catwalks on the inside. You know what I mean by that, narrow walkways and stairways with holes in them, so that you had access to any part of the inside of the building. On the outside of the slot on both sides were laboratories backing into it, and they were large rooms, very large rooms. So that if any change were to be made--and I didn't know what would actually happen-- one could go inside there and get to the back of the laboratory and plug it into oxygen or helium or some kind of liquid. God only knows what they might want in the way of facility, or they might want an entirely different air- conditioning system in that particular laboratory for some reason or other.

LASKEY

So this catwalk space that you're talking about is really a service area to deal with facilities and necessities?

ALEXANDER

Right. And then outside the row of laboratories that backed up on this service area was a corridor, and across the corridor was a series of rooms with windows and each major laboratory that would house twenty, thirty, or forty people doing their work. It would be a professor and his entourage, including students. Across the hall from that would be a seminar room and offices for the scientists, who were the major actors in this scene and would have to have a little office. But it wasn't very important to them; their important thing was the laboratory. And, oh, there were all kinds of things. A major nonfeature was no anatomy laboratory room, although that came in later. The basement had animal quarters. Animals were to be raised off campus in an out-of-door space, and if they were to be used in medical experiments they were to be housed in the basement. Then on each floor there was an animal holding room, and then there were dirty elevators and clean elevators and all that sort of jazz. The first year of medicine-- The concept was developed by biologists and the dean mainly and myself as to how it could be done. The concept was that in the first year of medicine the neophyte doctor would become a biologist. He would do that by working side by side with graduate students who were attracted to a certain professor. They would go to classes, but the most important thing was knocking elbows with a scientific atmosphere. The idea was to become a biologist in a year. Well, in two years they become biologists. The first year it was working in these laboratories mainly; the second year of work involved individual cubicles. So that they had not only carrels, but a place with a door, and they could go in there and have their books on the shelf and so on. Each one in the class had one of these cubicles. And then there were two major lecture halls. We had heard that there was going to be a VA [Veterans Administration] hospital very close to it, which turned out to be true. Although they would have mainly geriatric cases, certain specialized cases, nevertheless, they would be connected underground. As [would] the future teaching hospital [medical teaching facility] , which was anticipated to be next to this first two years of medicine, where the next two years would be clinical. There would be an underground connection there by which a patient could be brought in and up to one of these lecture halls as a demonstration to the group of doctors or would-be doctors in the lecture hall. I'd seen examples of motion pictures shown on a glass screen so that one could walk in front of the screen and not obstruct the projection.

LASKEY

Walk in front of it?

ALEXANDER

Well, if you show a motion picture, or a TV as it turns out, against a certain kind of glass that's made for the purpose, that's in the room behind the screen. But in front of the screen the lecturer can walk around without disturbing. In other words it's not a front projection, it's a rear projection.

LASKEY

Rear projection.

ALEXANDER

And I devised that for both halls, whether they've been used successfully that way or not. Closed- circuit TV was under development, but it hadn't come up to what it is now. The thing was wired for closed-circuit TV throughout the entire complex, through all the laboratories and the whole business. We also had a TV room in the basement for a professor to put on a show of his particular specialty, whatever that might be. It was a regular TV studio. Well, that's enough of the details about the content . For my presentation I made slides likening the building to the human body, which breathes, and there's an air-conditioning system; which has a nervous system; which has a blood-circulating system; and which has a digestive system and so on; and also a reproductive system. Not only the presentation of this analogy of the human body, but also the plan itself and the elements and how the plan had developed went over like a million dollars in the regents' meeting when I presented it. The chancellor at UCLA at the time was [Franklin D.] Murphy. No sooner had I finished when Murphy jumped up with great enthusiasm and said how great it was and so on and so forth. Oh, many cheers, and everything was just splendid!

LASKEY

How about Clark Kerr?

ALEXANDER

Well, he wasn't saying anything that I can recall. But I had nothing against him whatsoever. I can just imagine his embarrassment. It must have been awful. Well, that went fine. Oh, I should say that before that presentation-- Was it before or after? Well, anyway, when I came home from Germany-- No, it was after that presentation. Anyway, things started to happen there. That is to say, the regents found this replacement of two people for one for the chancellor, and at the ground- breaking ceremony for the building for the college of medicine, the dean [Joseph Stokes] announced his resignation. Let's see, the first professors started to arrive, and in a fairly short time, while the building was under construction, each professor who arrived had his own peculiar set of circumstances and desires, which were accommodated--in spite of the fact that we didn't know in advance- -because of this slot in the middle of the building. So that it was flexible. There were hundreds of change orders. It was just crazy.

LASKEY

But it could be done.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, and it was done. And it would have been impossible if it hadn't been for that flexibility built in by the interior slot. The bids came in, incidentally. The bids on the UCLA college of medicine [Center for Health Sciences] just scared the hell out of the regents, and they didn't know what the hell they were getting into down there. The estimate for the building had been $13 million, and it came in about $10 or $11 [million] . It was way low. And yet it was not a phony contract or anything like that. Of course, there were all these change orders, so that the ultimate cost was more than that, but that had nothing to do with us. That was because in their way of going about things, we had no medical advice to speak of in the development of the building. The head of the dean of medicine of UCLA, [Sherman M.] Mellinkoff, had given me his copy of the biography of the most famous father of medicine in the United States. He was a Canadian, I don't remember his name right now. I read that from cover to cover. I had done a lot of things to get ready for this. All right, another thing that happened when I came back from Germany, I found that there had been a meeting in my absence down at Borrego Hot Springs--which is a funny thing, to get it off campus. I don't know why it was done, but that was the case. [It was] led by Mr. Tippetts, who by that time was an enemy, for obvious reasons.

LASKEY

Did he ever explain to you why he took the tack he did? Was there ever, even in the beginning, a reasonable reason why he should have felt that way?

ALEXANDER

Well, he may have simply thought that it took a special architectural experience of some kind to do what was done. Anyway, my people from the office reported that something was afoot and they didn't know what was going on. But as soon as I got back I was taken into a room. A contract for the first building of the second college had been signed, and I had nobody to guide me as to what was going on, except the content of the program. I was taken into a room and shown a model of something that looked incredibly amorphous and meaningless to me, which the architect that I had recommended for this first building in the second college had made as his idea of a second college as a whole. It looked something like the stuff you have on the table in there, a lot of little cubes piled high on the table.

LASKEY

Little building blocks.

ALEXANDER

Yeah. And what I had envisioned as the second college was abstractly based on-- Well, the very first building was a science building, chemistry I believe it was, and one objective was to get the air from chemistry experiments out of the noses of people. This led to what I called snorkels, vertical shafts, which reflected my original abstract vision of what this second campus might be In form. Well, It turned out that in my absence a very logical thing had happened. The university started out with a very heavy scientific bent, and the campus planning committee had decided, or maybe the regents, I don't know who, that the second college should be humanities oriented. Great idea. It turned out to be finally called-- [pause] Who's the early California wanderer who went through the High Sierras and--

LASKEY

John Muir.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, this was the John Muir College. Well, I didn't know any of this, and I didn't realize that the guy who was sitting across the table, a new faculty member, had been chosen as the head of the new college. And he had these dreams, which I had never heard about, and here's a building under construction. You couldn't do anything about that. Well, anyway, that didn't work out very favorably. They weren't any more forthright than they had been about some other things.

LASKEY

Was this just part of the nature of working with a bureaucracy?

ALEXANDER

Well, it would be nice if somebody had said anytime along the line, "Well, the second college should be humanities oriented." Then I would have had a clue. I had no such clue. I'm wholeheartedly in favor of the idea, but I didn't know that was the idea, because the very first building in the second college was a chemistry building. Okay, during the construction of the college of medicine, it went through three chancellors; I believe there were three successive deans; two presidents of the university. I mean, there were all kinds of changes. Meantime, the assistant chancellor made my life miserable, and finally I decided it just wasn't worth it and I resigned as consulting architect. I still continued the construction of the college of medicine, and both the first dean of medicine and the first chancellor are very good friends of mine today, whenever I've stopped in there. But the next turn was to find my replacement. Incidentally, they did get rid of Tippetts. I don't know whether he went to another campus or what happened to him. But in any event, he was no longer there, and they got somebody, I believe, specifically to make things hard for me, which he proceeded to do.

LASKEY

But weren't they content with the medical building?

ALEXANDER

Oh, that had nothing to do with it. I was still somebody who challenged their authority with the regents .

LASKEY

So it's still strictly the fact that you had gone to the regents over —

ALEXANDER

Over nothing. I had been selected over the objections of the president.

LASKEY

But hadn't the other, Becket and--?

ALEXANDER

However they did that and handled it, I don't know. But they had not had the experience of being selected over the objection of the president, that's for sure. Anyway, that hounded me. Where was I? I was talking about the selection of somebody to replace the head of the A and E [architects and engineers] office. He was somebody I knew from the Los Angeles area, but he turned out to be very antagonistic.

LASKEY

To you?

ALEXANDER

Yes. He was hired for that purpose, in my opinion. Let's see, what was I going to say? Oh, I found that I was not being consulted about things that a consulting architect should be. So I complained to, or stated that at least, to the new chancellor, and he agreed with me that a consulting architect should be consulted. But he couldn't say that I would be in the future, and I wasn't. This was part of the harassment; it was sort of a negative harassment. But I was not in a position to fulfill my responsibility, no question about it. So anyway, I finally did resign and--

LASKEY

Who was your replacement?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. Okay, that's where I was going to go. The replacement was A. Q. [Quincy] Jones.

LASKEY

And he was antagonistic to you?

ALEXANDER

Not in the least, no.

LASKEY

Who was it that was antagonistic to you, then?

ALEXANDER

He was a former architect in charge of the state university work, he worked for the state university. I don't remember his name right now. [M. A. Cason]

LASKEY

But it wasn't your replacement, then.

ALEXANDER

No. As soon as the word got out that I was in trouble. Bill [William] Pereira jumped in and did his best to get that job, as well as [University of California] Irvine. He deluged the campus-- I went down there once, and I found the campus just deluged with these sketches with different variations on my proposal for the long-range development plan. Anyway, fortunately he was not selected, but A. Q. Jones was. I'm sure that it was not A. Q. Jones's machinations at all, but if you go there today you will find various things that I can easily see were done out of spite to prevent my plan from ever being carried out. A building for the performing arts that Jones designed lies right across the main axis that I had expected to hold twelve campuses together, or however many it was. They had the plans for the second set of three of a cluster of residence halls. And instead of going ahead to build those, which would have been very popular, I believe, they built a hollow, square, multistory, elevatored building right behind the dining hall where I had expected a theater to go. And I stayed in it on one occasion when I went down there, oh, some seventeen days with Rogers, the psychologist.

LASKEY

Oh, Carl Rogers?

ALEXANDER

Carl Rogers. And I stayed in this new dormitory setup. That court was the noisiest thing I've ever experienced. Well, the whole thing was a mess compared to this cluster of stuff that I had designed, from my standpoint of course. It was done out of spite, as I see it. And, of course, Bill Pereira designed a fantastic library, not where my plan had recommended it at all. And what I had shown abstractly — And this was no specific design, except I had to show something. I had shown a pyramid, so that each floor had, in effect, a terrace outside of it, where you could go outside when you felt like it, in the shade or the sun or whatever you wanted. I can just see-- I know the way Bill thinks, or thought. You know the shape of the library that was built?

LASKEY

No, I don't.

ALEXANDER

Okay, you've seen pictures of it or you've seen it in movies or things like that. It was a pyramid turned upside down.

LASKEY

Okay, yes.

ALEXANDER

You know what I mean?

LASKEY

Yes, I do.

ALEXANDER

That's exactly what he would do. He'd say, "What did he show there? A pyramid? Okay, let's turn it upside down. He showed it out where you can see the ocean, we'll stick it in the trees." Which he did.

LASKEY

Was that his choice or was the decision to place the library somewhere else--?

ALEXANDER

I'm sure it was his. I'm confident it was his. I can't ask him now. Anyway, that was sort of a disaster. Meantime, my life went on with other things -- For instance, I was on the campus one day when things were in good shape, in a meeting with the campus planning committee. Before the meeting was up I was called to the telephone, and it was somebody from Anchorage, Alaska, saying, "You know, we just had this Easter earthquake up here." (This was May or something like that.) "We'd like to have you come up and replan the central business district." "Oh, yeah? Okay, well, sure. I'd love to look into it, anyway." "We'd like to have you here Monday afternoon." This was Friday. I said, "My office is closed already. I'm down in San Diego, and I can't get to the office until Monday. I can't make arrangements until then, and I don't see how I could be there Monday at all." I got to the office Monday, and I found that there was a three- hour time change between Seattle and Anchorage- -or there was at that time. It is no longer. There is an arbitrary difference now. But I found that I could indeed get a plane at something like noon in Los Angeles and be there at seven o'clock their time that evening. So I went up and found what the situation was and eventually got a contract and took three guys up there, worked over a period of three months on a very exciting project. Well, that was fine as far as it went. Everything was very successful, I thought, except one thing. Soon after I returned home-- Oh, I should say, I don't know how much you're interested in little asides like this, but these three guys that I took up there were-- [Chris Wojciechowski] was Polish, a great big monstrous guy who was used to skiing. He took his skiing equipment. [Carl Tragsiel was] an elderly gentleman who for fifteen years had been head of architectural design in an architectural institute of Vienna. I don't know which it was. Anyway, he was wonderful with young people.

1.26. TAPE NUMBER: XIII, SIDE TWO
MAY 12, 1987

ALEXANDER

He had been brought up in ski country and was an expert skier. In fact, once a year, without saying anything in advance as to what his plans were, he would come to me and say, "I'm going to Austria tomorrow. I'll be back in three weeks." And I'd say, "Okay, Carl, be glad to see you when you come back." He went over there to see his family and his old friends and to ski. As I say, he was wonderful with young people, and I took one of them along, who was Amorsolo Manligas, from the Philippines, and he had never seen a snowflake in his life. The very first weekend-- I was recovering from a ski accident myself, and I was on crutches. I had been offered a plane ride by a bush pilot to see the environs of Anchorage that first weekend after we were up there together. Carl Tragsiel and Chris [Wojciechowski] had their ski equipment with them, and they were going to ski Alieska ski run. I said, "Okay, that's great. Amor, you just stay in the motel and read." Well, instead of that they took Amor with them. They rented ski equipment for him out there, they took him to the top of the mountain, and he came down twice without killing himself.

LASKEY

How did he do it, on his hands and knees? How terrifying. Remind me again, what time of year were you there? Obviously they were skiing--

ALEXANDER

May, June, July. By the time I got them up there, it was probably June. Yeah, I got them up there the first of June, maybe, and June, July, August they worked on the thing with me. But I was going back and forth at the time, frequently. Then they had done such good jobs, and I was so pleased with it that I said that-- "Oh, Chris has to go back to Los Angeles to be in court for something or other--you two guys can have a trip at my expense anyplace in Alaska." So they chose to go together to Nome and Kotzebue, where they got tossed in a blanket, and Carl made sketches and they had a good time. Meantime, I went fishing at Katmai National Monument. It's now a national park I think, where the Valley of the Ten Thousand Smokes is. And there was a camp known as Brooks Camp on the Brooks River. The Brooks River is only two miles long, and it is choked with fish. Midway between two lakes-- Incidentally, it flows into the Bering Sea, not into the Gulf of Alaska. Midway along the river there was about a twelve-foot waterfall, which has been pictured several times in the National Geographic over a period of years, where the sockeye salmon, colored red at that time when they're about to mate, come up that little twelve-foot fall by the zillion. I was there just after that event, so that the area around the falls was like a cushion with the bones of salmon that the bears had been eating. Thousands and thousands of salmon skeletons.

LASKEY

Do the bears fish for salmon essentially the same way we do? They just take them out of the water?

ALEXANDER

Well, they have claws and they go whaaaap, like that, and the claws go in the salmon and they have a salmon. And as I was fishing near that place, I came across the track of one of those bears. I measured it--I had a tape measure along to measure my fish--and this darn bear track was seventeen inches long.

LASKEY

Would these have been grizzly bears?

ALEXANDER

They were kodiak bears. They're Alaska bears. They're not brown or black, they're light tan in color.

LASKEY

And big.

ALEXANDER

They're enormous. When they stand up, they'd scare the hell out of you; they're very, very big. Well, I didn't see one, thank god. But I did catch a lot of fish. I had a great time there. Well, let's get back home. What was I doing otherwise? Oh, yes, I'll tell you the outcome. I was delighted with the way things went, and soon after being up there and finishing my work--

LASKEY

What did you do in Anchorage?

ALEXANDER

I developed a plan for the renovation or the rebuilding of the city that had been shaken down to its roots, and the plan depended, really, on an economic concept. The J. C. Penney store had been made of precast panels; they're supposed to be welded together on the site and under close inspection. And the inspection in Anchorage was not all it was cracked up to be. So it fell down like a deck of cards, killing several people. That was an important economic asset to Anchorage. Then Sears [and Roebuck Company] was the other big economic force in Anchorage, and they had bought land way out on the outskirts, the way they do very often here. They'll be their own thing, you know. The success of my plan depended on the economic fact that J. C. Penney was going to rebuild right where they had been, and the idea was to get Sears to build at the other end of a series of smaller stores. In other words, creating a shopping center in downtown Anchorage typical of ones that we see today here. Well, that was beyond my capacity unless I stayed on there forever. The city council and the mayor should have taken this on, and my report pointed this out, that this was their chore to do. Sometime after I came home I had a call from the mayor of Anchorage, who had come down to speak to a convention of engineers on earthquakes, at the Biltmore Hotel, just a couple of blocks from my office. So I went over to hear him, and after his talk I asked him to come over to the office. I had some slides of my presentation of the thing to give him.

LASKEY

This is when you were still in the Mobil Building?

ALEXANDER

Yes. And I said, "How are things going up there?" "Just fine." I said, "In spite of the fact that you have approved the plan, the city council approved it, before them, the planning commission approved this plan, and the federal government approved it, there's just one thing that worries me. And that is that the president of the First National Bank of Alaska does not like the plan. In fact, he hates it. It seems he had made loans on several whorehouses and several saloons that fell down there, and he wants it built back just the way it was." And the mayor said, "Bob, don't worry about that. He doesn't have a vote on the city council." Well, the next month he was elected mayor. [laughter] So that's what sometimes happens to plans that mice and men make, you know.

LASKEY

Was there no protest from the people of Anchorage?

ALEXANDER

Well, the people of Anchorage could care less for the most part. I mean, who knows about things like that here even? There was protest from the mayor, who was no longer mayor, and from some city councilmen, maybe. But the man who later became secretary of the interior under Nixon and resigned-- He was from Anchorage.

LASKEY

James Watt?

ALEXANDER

No, the one under Nixon. It was a guy who had a superficial reputation that I would have thought that he might be a Watt. In fact I was concerned when he became secretary of the interior, but he turned out to resign in protest against Nixon's policies, because he was at heart a conservationist. He was also, however, like all the Alaskans, an independent cuss who wouldn't take advice from anybody else. And when the task force on the earthquake prescribed an area where nothing higher than one story should be built ever, of course he proceeded to build a hotel at that location. What's his name? Wally--

LASKEY

We'll think of it shortly. [Walter J. Hickel]

ALEXANDER

So that was that as far as Anchorage was concerned. At the same time I had been working. In fact, when I was selected for the university work, I had already been working on a general plan for the city of Escondido [California] .

LASKEY

How did you get involved with Escondido?

ALEXANDER

Well, there was a young man in my office--this was while I was still on Glendale Boulevard before I moved into the Mobil Building--a young man in my office whose wife's parents lived in Escondido.

LASKEY

So it didn't come out of your relationship with UCSD [University of California, San Diego] .

ALEXANDER

No, it was one of the examples that I used to show the regents that I had some concept of working on a large scale. One of the slides I used to show the regents was the work that I had done up to that time on Escondido. Anyway, I went down there frequently and sometimes made the circuit, to Escondido and then the university. Then on one occasion the city manager of Escondido said, "You're in trouble." He said, "I've had some calls from some of these retired admirals around here that you're a dangerous communist."

LASKEY

Okay, now, let's put this in time. This must have been the late fifties then, perhaps, if you were still in Glendale.

ALEXANDER

No, Glendale Boulevard. I stopped working on new work with [Richard J.] Neutra in 1958. In 1960, I believe, I moved. So it was 1959 when I started.

LASKEY

Okay, late fifties.

ALEXANDER

Okay. That's pretty late. [laughter]

LASKEY

I'm just trying to put it in the context of the political era in the country.

ALEXANDER

It was ' 60-something when I was challenged, '60 or '61.

LASKEY

This is the early Kennedy years then.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, okay. And I said, " Where 'd they get that idea?" He said, "Well, you better go around and visit the newspaper editor." I forget who that was. So I went to visit the newspaper editor. I said, "What's this I hear?" He said, "Well, have you seen this book?" "Oh, yes," I said. "Yeah, that's the Tenney Report." Have you ever heard of the Tenney Report?

LASKEY

Tenney was a congressman.

ALEXANDER

No, the state of California had their own un- American activities committee.

LASKEY

He would be an assemblyman, then.

ALEXANDER

Yeah, an assemblyman by the name of [Jack B.] Tenney. I said, "Yeah, I've seen those reports." There were two of them as far as I know, maybe more. "But that guy went to jail. "

LASKEY

Did he really? I didn't know that.

ALEXANDER

He said, "Well, you're mentioned in every Tenney Report in the index, and if you look-- How'd you get mixed up with this guy [Frank B.] Wilkinson?" "Why shouldn't I get mixed up with him? I was doing the largest project in the public housing program." "Public housing?" "Yes, the public housing program in Los Angeles. He was in charge of community relations. Why shouldn't I see him? "

LASKEY

Wilkinson being--

ALEXANDER

Frank Wilkinson.

LASKEY

Who was -- ?

ALEXANDER

Well, he worked for the [Los Angeles City] Housing Authority, and he refused to say that he was or was not a communist in front of, not only the Tenney committee, but the Congress.

LASKEY

The House [Committee on] Un-American Activities.

ALEXANDER

The most un-American committee we've ever had. Yeah.

LASKEY

So you had worked with--

ALEXANDER

I knew him very well as a friend and a business associate. I still think he's a great guy. His father was a minister who instilled in him some sound American principles. "It's none of your goddamned business what I think."

LASKEY

It's called the First Amendment.

ALEXANDER

Right. Well, anyway, then I learned from him -- No, I guess I learned from the city manager that at the next meeting of the city council where I was to present this plan, Clark Kerr had sent an emissary down to listen in to see how I got along. Well, I had learned somehow or other that it's bad news when you run if something like this happens. That's when they all start to nip at your heels and give you a bad time. So I went right ahead and made my presentation. Nobody said a damn thing. Oh, incidentally, before that when I was with the newspaper editor, he said, "Have you ever done any federal work? " I said, "Yeah." He said, "Do you have anything that would show that this guy Tenney was crazy?" I said, "I don't know about him, but I do have a security clearance." He said, "You have?" I said, "Well, I was involved in two fallout-shelter surveys that were pilot surveys under Eisenhower."

LASKEY

Under Eisenhower, that's interesting.

ALEXANDER

And when I finished the one for Contra Costa County, the-- What's the name of the big research outfit for the Air Force at Santa Monica?

LASKEY

Rand [Corporation] .

ALEXANDER

The Rand Corporation asked me if I would be a consultant on this. And I said, "Sure. I'm convinced that it's a bad way to go, but I'll be your consultant." They said, "Well, we'd like to have you, and if you're willing, you'd be more valuable to us if you had a security clearance." So I said okay. So I made a date with two young air force security men, whatever they call themselves, and was grilled by them all day. I wish to god I'd kept a copy of their transcript. They were, it turned out, much more interested in Neutra than they were in me. And I don't know why to this day. Because I could frankly say to them and truly say to them that we had never discussed such things. I knew that he was liberal in his leanings and so on, but we never talked about being a communist or not, and I could care less.

LASKEY

Probably the fact that he was foreign, that he was European.

ALEXANDER

Anyway, I have no idea why it was. But I did tell them-- I guess I hadn't put this on tape. I might as well at this point. In the Henry Wallace days, before Henry Wallace ran for president-- I don't know what year that would have been. It must have been immediately after the war. Yeah, it was right after the war. I was a member of the arts, sciences, and professions council of the independent citizens committee of-- I don't know. CIO? I don't know what it was. No, it wasn't the CIO; it was an independent committee. [Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions] I was on the board of directors. Carey McWilliams was on the board of directors with me, as well as Stan [Stanley] Mosk's brother, younger brother [Edward Mosk] . And Don McQueen, who was my dentist. Maybe that's the way I got on it, I'm not sure. Anyway, I served on the board of this arts. sciences, and professions council, and we had visits from all over. A scientist in atomic work who had been on the Manhattan Project, named Morrison, who later taught at Cornell University for years--I think he's still there-- came to speak to us. Many people came. Astronomer [Harlow] Shapley of Harvard [University], for instance. We were interested in no more war, no more atomic business. And, of course, this made us obviously Russophiles, I guess you'd call them.

LASKEY

This would have been very early for a protest against nuclear war. I mean, that didn't really start until the seventies, where it became a full-scale kind of thing. I think people were still considering, in the late fifties, using the bomb as a regular weapon. So you must have looked very radical .

ALEXANDER

Yeah, this was being pretty radical, and especially when the presidential campaign came along and Henry Wallace decided to run for president. You don't know about that?

LASKEY

Yeah, I do. But I can't remember which campaign it was. Did he run against Harry Truman or would it have been--?

ALEXANDER

Yes, it must have been. It was the Independent Progressive Party, I believe it was called.

LASKEY

So it was either '48 or '52. 'Fifty-two was of course Eisenhower.

ALEXANDER

Whatever it was. Anyway, Wallace ran for president as an Independent. It [the party] was called the IPP, Independent Progressive Party. Well, there was an attempt made to get the arts, sciences, and professions council and all of its branches and so forth to advocate Henry Wallace and IPP. Some of us liked Wallace better than anybody else who was running, but our stand had always been that we were independent. We were for principles and not for people or parties or that sort of thing. Incidentally, some members of the Hollywood Ten were members of our group, or at least talked to us. I guess they were members of another branch. It wouldn't be arts, sciences; it would be actors or whatever. Well, the upshot was that one night at a board meeting, which was attended by the general membership, they pulled the tactic-- That is, the people who wanted this to become the IPP really wanted the arts, sciences, and professions council to in effect become part of the IPP. They pulled one parliamentary thing out of the hat after another and kept the meeting going and going and going until we finally left. And then I know that Carey McWilliams and Don McQueen and I resigned at that time. I think Stan Mosk's brother did too, I'm not sure. I think the whole damn board of directors resigned in protest over this; maybe we were ousted, I don't know. It's been a long time ago. Well, I had to divulge all this stuff that they knew about. I didn't have anything to hide. So I just went on and on all day long answering their questions. And they didn't find anything wrong with me ultimately. I'm surprised, because just out of principle I would think the Air Force would. There was no high-security clearance, like a Q clearance. I don't know what it was called.

LASKEY

Probably a confidential clearance.

ALEXANDER

Something like that. I don't know. So I had this piece of paper to show the newspaper editor. And I don't know whether he got the news around or what, but I was not challenged in the city council meeting at all, and evidently the news got back to Kerr that I ' d come through this unscathed. That was before I challenged Kerr. That was before the college of medicine business.

LASKEY

That was not concurrent with it.

ALEXANDER

That was concurrent with my dealing with the university. But the school of medicine came later.

LASKEY

Well, in getting that clearance, did you have to go back over the problems that you had had on the [Los Angeles] City Planning Commission?

ALEXANDER

Oh, sure.

LASKEY

When you had to deal with [Councilman Ed J.] Davenport, and that whole sort of red-baiting era.

ALEXANDER

It all came out. There was a whole day's worth of testimony. [pause] We digressed to go to Escondido. What else happened at that time. Do you have any notes?

LASKEY

Oh, yeah. Well, about the same time you had also gotten involved with USC [University of Southern California] . That might have been a little bit later. The dates that I have are also somewhat arbitrary. But I have the dining facility [at University of California, San Diego], the school of medicine [at University of California, San Diego] , and the married students housing at USC being somewhat at the same time.

ALEXANDER

The dining facility and what?

LASKEY

The basic science, the school of medicine, and the married students housing.

ALEXANDER

All right, the married students housing. Tony, the campus architect of USC, came to me in distress because of a time schedule and said he had to have a sketch in on a certain building [and that] they would like me to be the architect of it. It would be for married students, and he told me the location and asked if I would get out a sketch that he could use and make the application for the federal funds for this thing. So I did, practically overnight, put together a concept drawing which was pretty humdrum. It wasn't far-out in any way, just sort of an adequate housing block. And I didn't hear anything about this for a long time, and apparently they got the funds and called me in. I had a contract meantime, and then it turned out that Bill Pereira was the consulting architect at USC.

LASKEY

He was a busy little fellow, wasn't he.

ALEXANDER

It was justified. He knew [Leonard] Firestone, who was a prominent board member of USC. He had done work for Firestone, commercial, industrial, I don't know what. Anyway, he got into a very good position with the leaders of the board of governors, or whatever they're called at USC. I had no way to go in that connection, but I had made friends with Norman Topping, the new president out at USC. And naturally Bill won out, which is okay.

LASKEY

Well, a slight digression here-- How big was the Pereira firm at that time?

ALEXANDER

I couldn't tell you in numbers. I never paid attention to that.

LASKEY

Was it relatively a large firm, even then?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yes. For Los Angeles, very large. I don't think he had sub-offices in other places except when something was under construction or something like that. Didn't have branch offices as far as I know. But anyway, he raised hell with me for this preliminary design that had been used to get the funds. I said, "Well, it was done practically overnight, and there's no reason why I can't improve it. Just give me a little time to do something different, because I quite agree with you that it's quite ordinary." So I came up with what is built there now, which has again a lot of Malcolm Leland's individual sculpture work. I told him what I wanted. He had a contract: his services were built into the building contract, and when it came to executing the design, he would actually supervise the making of the molds and so on. The building was designed so that the contractor had an option of either prefabricating various elements and hoisting them into place, or pouring it in place, which is the option that the contractor chose.

LASKEY

I've seen the USC building. How would you describe it? Since it really is very sculptural on the exterior, it should be described.

ALEXANDER

Well, the front that faces Exposition Boulevard and which you can see from the stadium, the [Los Angeles Memorial] Coliseum, is the sculptural side, in which the columns and the horizontal members are molded. That's all I can say about that.

LASKEY

They almost look like a Moorish arch.

ALEXANDER

That's another part of the feature, that's true. That is reflected on the opposite side, where it frames a window in studio apartments. That part, I think, is quite successful. The form that it took was not intended to be Moorish or anything like that. It just developed from fooling around with pleasant forms.

LASKEY

I see, it's sort of-- I thought that when I saw it.

ALEXANDER

It's sort of a tree effect to hold up the balcony or hold up the structure. And it is structurally, if you want to know the derivation of the thing-- You need less support as you go toward the center of a span and more support near the column, and this is how the arch was devised. If you take two trees and put them together, they form an arch effect. And these were-- Just because of proportions, I think you could call them Moorish.

LASKEY

I was just using that as a vaguely identifiable form. They're not a true arch in that sense, and the tree shape is equally descriptive.

ALEXANDER

Each one is a cantilever. That's all I can say verbally. Interesting thing happened there. I took a draftsman from the office with me when I met with Bill to show him the new design. I had done it myself, but somehow Bill got the idea that the draftsman who I took with me-- I was just trying to give him some experience. Bill got the idea that this draftsman was the originator of this design. So he proceeded to hire the guy. I don't know whether the draftsman went to him or he called the draftsman thinking that he had a find. The draftsman didn't last there very long, because he had nothing to do with it, he just went with me.

LASKEY

Now, these arches were all poured in place. Do you build forms and then you--?

ALEXANDER

And Malcolm was under contract to supervise the forming so that they get it the way he intended it in his sculptural form. And that is related to something that was built before that, it seems to me. I don't know just when that was. The international center.

LASKEY

At UCLA, the International Students Center, yes.

ALEXANDER

I don't know when the design of that actually took place, but the same draftsman was involved in that.

LASKEY

I have here 1961. Does that sound reasonably right? And then USC in ' 63 .

ALEXANDER

Well, that's the date of construction, so that could be. Well, they're related in my mind because whoever that draftsperson was--I forget his name--he was involved in both of those projects. In the case of the International Students Center, they had a sixty- foot lot. That's all they had. And they wanted to park automobiles below. I had to get a special dispensation. It takes sixty feet in a normal parking area, and you have to have some walls to build a building, so it took some squeezing to get the — I was telling him, "Now, we have foreign students. Why don't they have foreign cars, little ones?"

LASKEY

Maybe they have scooters.

ALEXANDER

Anyway, the concept of the building came partly out of the need to use the entire sixty feet of width for parking. And then above that if I had a setback on each side for light into a building and had a building as a lump in the middle, and then if somebody came and built adjacent to it right on the property line, it would be about the most unpleasant place I could think of. So I went for a hollowed doughnut form, a hollowed square with no windows on the outside. I mean, the outside walls were on the property line, and all windows [opened] onto an interior court. I was interested in making this a place that was easily adaptable to all kinds of foreign-land festivals. For instance, the one that I recall telling them, to illustrate the point-- The festival of lights in India is the most delightful time to walk around and see these little lights. Every little hovel may have a niche and the lid of some jar with a little oil and a wick and a light. So I wanted to reproduce that kind of thing for any country that might have a special kind of a deal. And this place was not to house a lot of students permanently--they didn't have the funds to do that at that time — but a place for them to flop while they were getting located and a place for the manager of international student affairs to live, just one manager's apartment and of course toilet facilities and meeting rooms and that sort of thing.

LASKEY

A place for them to get together, too. Isn't it a community meeting hall?

ALEXANDER

Right, and there was an eating place. The idea was that they would have students from different countries at different times prepare the meal.

LASKEY

They still do.

ALEXANDER

And one funny thing happened. The foreign students who had been brought up with nothing but a Far Eastern toilet, which is really two footprints and a hole in the floor, were used to squatting. And the Western toilet, our type of toilet, was apt to result in constipation. So what can we do about this? Well, the building code doesn't anticipate anything like an Eastern toilet. I found that we couldn't get that approved at all. So I said, "Okay, suppose we build a very strong toilet seat." That is, a platform on which you can stand and squat on it, with a hole in it and then the seat will flap up. The building inspector just couldn't believe his eyes; he didn't know what it was about. But it was not illegal. I don't know what's happened to that. Anyway, in working with these enthusiastic people in charge of the program there, the citizens of Westwood, we got along famously. I respected and really loved their enthusiasm. After the opening they were so pleased, they had a little booklet in which visitors, the opening day, or maybe it was later than the opening day, wrote little items. I think I still have one of those booklets. I had one of those booklets from the sixth grade at UCLA at the elementary demonstration school. I don't know where that is. I think it's with my stuff at Cornell.

LASKEY

That must have been a wonderful thing to have. I had understood and I've always thought that the International Students Center was part of UCLA.

ALEXANDER

No, it's private.

LASKEY

It was privately financed.

ALEXANDER

The whole thing, the organization, is private. Do you know Marvin Braude?

LASKEY

Of course.

ALEXANDER

He's been a councilman for years now, but at that time he was one of the members of the building committee. Well, I put my heart and soul into developing this thing. I was not so much interested in the external characteristics as in the court and content of the building, which is very often the case in the stuff that I've done. But it was acclaimed by the users anyway, and the board was very happy.

1.27. TAPE NUMBER: XIV, SIDE ONE
MAY 13, 1987

LASKEY

Okay, Mr. Alexander, I thought we'd begin today by just talking about Bunker Hill Towers.

ALEXANDER

Well, Baldwin Hills Village put me on the map, more or less, in the field of housing. In addition to my interest in public housing, as a result of which I was appointed for a series of years immediately after the war to a national committee of the AIA [American Institute of Architects] on housing [city planning committee]-- It was eventually called housing and planning, I believe. Louis Justement, of Washington, D.C., was the chairman of the committee. The committee also included Albert Mayer of New York City and Henry Churchill of Philadelphia and Jerry [Jerrold] Loebl of Chicago. We met together, I guess, for at least five successive years on national policies regarding housing. Louis Justement had written a seminal book, little known today, called New Cities for Old, in which he had identified the decay of cities of the United States, which were now becoming old, and a great deal of the old stuff was not built of stone like old European villages and eventually cities probably were. His book argued the case for the public to acquire large areas of such rundown sections of a city, to retain the land, for which they had paid dearly, to tear down the buildings and lease the land to private developers to build new buildings. And he was talking mainly about housing. This would be a perpetual operation to keep a city rejuvenated. As he saw it, this would continue to happen over centuries, and this was the way to go about it. Well, this was the first concept that I had run into of a redevelopment process. Meantime, Reg [Reginald D.] Johnson, the architect whom I worked with on Baldwin Hills Village, was chairman of a Town Hall [of California] section on regional planning, which he urged me to join. I became a member of Town Hall and met with his committee, and over a period of time we talked about various subjects. We got around to the initial phases of a redevelopment program, which was then being discussed in various places in the country--I know it was.

LASKEY

Town Hall, was that a forum in Los Angeles?

ALEXANDER

Yes. You don't know about it? Have you heard of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco?

LASKEY

Yes.

ALEXANDER

Okay, Town Hall of Southern California is a vital organization, of which I became a board member for three years later on during the Vietnam War. That's another story. We'll get to that maybe. Well, we involved Charlie [Charles B.] Bennett and Milt [Milton] Breivogel, the new planning director and the principal planner, respectively. And this was simply private discussions, which then later became official discussions. When I was on the [Los Angeles City] Planning Commission, probably 1947 or thereabouts, maybe '48, Mayor [Fletcher] Bowron-- Oh, I should say before that — The [Los Angeles] City Planning Department made a series of studies of blighted areas, especially in the Bunker Hill area. It was the nearest one to city hall, practically surrounding city hall. They made studies of the incidence of calls for police assistance, the incidence of overt crime, the incidence of TB, the number of calls on the fire department. Anything which cost the city tax money was studied as it applied to Bunker Hill.

LASKEY

Now, this was city hall that was doing the study?

ALEXANDER

Yes. This was the city planning department.

LASKEY

Before you were involved?

ALEXANDER

Well, it was while I was involved on the commission. The department is the agency that makes the studies and does the work; the commission is a policy body and somewhat different. Anyway, it was found, as would be expected, that the cost to the city far outweighed the taxes received from this dilapidated property. On the other hand, rental per square foot of dwelling-- Bunker Hill was almost entirely dwellings. The rent per square foot per person was very high if you compared it with high- class rental property.

LASKEY

Why was that?

ALEXANDER

Because an entire family would live in one room. It was intensely occupied, and the rent for a family might be low, but the rent per square foot per person was very high. Oh, I have to jump back again, because there was, before the war, under the [Franklin D.] Roosevelt administration-- The Works Progress Administration, I think it was, that he established, had a provision for what we could today call redevelopment. And a group of architects in Los Angeles studied Bunker Hill and made it a case study for acquiring-- It was a slum clearance idea at that time.

LASKEY

In the thirties?

ALEXANDER

Yes, in the thirties.

LASKEY

Really?

ALEXANDER

Yeah. Well, it was, I suppose you'd say, a public housing project, but it was an attack on the problems of Bunker Hill, in any event. And they got back as far as going to Washington with it, to the agency involved, but before they accomplished anything, the whole Works Progress Administration was declared unconstitutional. I think it was some case in Atlanta. In any event, that whole program went down the drain. So it was much later, after the war, that a move toward some redevelopment law, both at the federal and state level, was being considered. And the studies that the city planning department of Los Angeles made were used both in congressional hearings and in the state legislature in hearings that led up to the drafting of legislation. I think it was the Wagner-Steagall Act that included redevelopment as one of the goals. I think it was a broad housing act, and that was followed by legislation in the state, in Sacramento. My recollection is that the state law differed from the federal in that it had the provision for incremental tax funds being held by the agency. In other words, the difference between the taxes the community received before redevelopment would be compared to the taxes on the redeveloped property, which would obviously be very much higher, and the difference between the taxes as they had been and the new taxes would not go to the city or the county but to the agency, to be spent to do certain things up to a certain point. It was not perpetual, but-- And then expediency led to selling property rather than leasing it, which is still true virtually nationwide, which I believe is unfortunate, because I think we will have to go through this same painful and very costly process at some time in the future. Well, while I was on the commission, Bowron appointed a redevelopment agency [Los Angeles City Community Redevelopment Agency] and a redevelopment commission. He appointed William [T.] Sesnon [Jr.], the heir of a longtime California family, as the chairman. He appointed Milt [Milton J.] Brock [Sr.], a homebuilder. Howard [L.] Holtzendorff was then director of the public housing authority [Los Angeles City Housing Authority]. And since the law required that people displaced by redevelopment must be housed, and since they were virtually all very low- income people, most of them would qualify for public housing. I forget who else right now. But Sesnon hung on like a bulldog for some twenty years before the first ground was broken for redevelopment on Bunker Hill. Bunker Hill was the largest redevelopment area in the United States. I don't know whether it is today or not, but it was. And it involved a lot of lawsuits. Naturally the attempt was made to acquire land without lawsuits by simply negotiation, but this was a new law being tested. So it took a long time to work everything out and to get the land cleared, with new roads and so on and so forth. Bunker Hill was not the first project- -there was a small one. The Ann Street project was the first redevelopment project officially, and that was simply to test the waters. It was not a very big area, and it involved industrial property. There was very little contest about it. But the Bunker Hill thing was something else. Now, I knew Bunker Hill before it was torn down, and there were certain charming aspects, as well as some disreputable, unsightly, not only unsightly but criminal and other aspects that were obviously not very good for the city, especially being adjacent to the core of the downtown commercial district of the entire sprawling city. It had been the most desirable place for the early commercial moguls to live. Mr. [Lewis L.] Bradbury, who had won millions in the silver mines of Mexico came up here and built himself a house on Bunker Hill, which was standing until redevelopment, as well as the Bradbury Building downtown. That was at a time when there were dirt streets and board sidewalks and everything was a mess in the city. There was a horsedrawn streetcar that went up over Bunker Hill to open up a new subdivision to the west, or north. To the west I guess it was. Angel ' s Flight was in existence until the very bitter end of Bunker Hill demolition. I took one of the last rides on it for five cents and kept the coupon for it for several years until Norman Topping became chairman of the RTD, [Southern California] Rapid Transit District. When we invited him to the Bradbury Building to a meeting of the Calcutta Saddle and Cycle Club, which had its playroom, you might say, in the Bradbury Building, we gave him a podium in the form of our barber chair. I presented him with this ticket of the Bunker Hill Angel's Flight, in hopes that he would find some way to convince the commission to restore a new and more beautiful Angel's Flight for Bunker Hill. Digression.

LASKEY

The question of the redevelopment of Bunker Hill, of course, is a terribly thorny one. I would just like your personal recollections and feelings on how you felt about the redevelopment of Bunker Hill at the time and how you might feel about it now.

ALEXANDER

Well, I should say this about the basic fundamental law [Wagner-Steagall Act] that Congress passed. When it started out, it was hailed by housers all over the country as a slum clearance law. This was the impetus that got it going. By the time that it got through Congress, it was no longer a humanitarian law, it was a property law. This is not unlike the Constitution of the United States, as far as that goes . By the time that Congress got through with it and approved it, the question became, is the property distressed? What can we do to improve the value of the property? Not what can we do to help the people. So with that orientation as a fundamental, basic law that was simply an enabling act on which all the state laws were based, you should not expect a peach tree to grow fish. In other words, it's a desirable but unfortunately an unrealistic expectation to have the law result in a humanitarian process that takes care of the people as well as it should.

LASKEY

Well, how much input did the major developers have in the developing of the law?

ALEXANDER

Plenty, plenty. But the housers, the people interested in low- income housing, also had input. They demanded, as I say, that there be a provision that the people displaced must be housed in safe and sanitary dwellings within their means. What actually happened at Bunker Hill and many other places was that although the public housing authority of the city set up an office right on Bunker Hill and did their best to persuade people that they wouldn't be hurt if they'd just come into one of the public housing projects, many people refused. They didn't have sufficient capacity, for one thing. But the other thing was that quite a few people disliked the whole idea of being in a public housing project. They would much rather go some place on their own. And many of them went out to the area around what ' s called MacArthur Park these days. It used to be something else.

LASKEY

Westlake.

ALEXANDER

Westlake, yeah.

LASKEY

Most of these people, or many of these people, were quite elderly, right?

ALEXANDER

Yes. There were many elderly, as well as many Chinese, many foreign people or handicapped people, people who couldn't get along economically for a variety of reasons and who liked to live downtown, incidentally. And especially the atmosphere of some of the property on Bunker Hill, before it was redeveloped, was really quite delightful, charming. Orange trees in the backyard, places for the kids to play, and that sort of thing. In this regard I should mention that in probably 1945, '47, the trustees of the [John Randolph] Haynes Foundation asked me and Drayton Bryant-- The foundation asked me first, and I got Drayton to help me. He was an employee of the public housing authority at the time. They asked us to write a little book on redevelopment in the United States up to that time [Rebuilding the City: A Study of Redevelopment Problems in Los Angeles] . There were very few examples, but they wanted to have something in the Los Angeles area to show what might be done here. So we recorded the various examples that we could find throughout the country, described them and what had happened. But as a local example we took Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine and suggested that Chavez Ravine be the decanting area of people on Bunker Hill. In other words, the people living on Bunker Hill when the property was obtained by the public agency, that those people be housed in a new project in Chavez Ravine. Now, the numbers of people we planned for in Chavez Ravine were many fewer than the people ultimately planned for by the housing authority, [which was] influenced by the federal government to get the density high.

LASKEY

That "ultimately" --you ' re talking about the Chavez Ravine .

ALEXANDER

Chavez Ravine or Elysian Park heights. So that we didn't have the extreme density to deal with in laying out a plan for Chavez Ravine. So this was a study of Bunker Hill and a study of Chavez Ravine. What happened in publication was that the first half of the book that we prepared was printed and the second half never got printed. And we believe it was because we made quite a point of the ideal community to be founded in Chavez Ravine being a community that contained all classes, all races, and all income groups, if possible.

LASKEY

This was 1951.

ALEXANDER

* Mr. Alexander added the following bracketed section during his review of the transcript.*[Our book was written in 1947. The actual housing project design was in 1951.] And the business of the racial integration was very unpopular with a few board members. This is what we heard at the time, and I don't know whether it's true or not. In any event, half of it never got published. The half with the illustration of Chavez Ravine was never published. That's all at Cornell [University] .

LASKEY

It is. Have you ever thought about attempting to get it republished even now?

ALEXANDER

No. I think it's pointless.

LASKEY

Just as an historical document.

ALEXANDER

Well, it would be historical, but no, I haven't thought about it. Well, getting back to Bunker Hill.

LASKEY

I have a question relative to this. Was there any thought at the time of maintaining any part of Bunker Hill, especially some of the Victorian-- The Bradbury House, for example. Was it ever considered for restoring?

ALEXANDER

No. Well, due to the location of Bunker Hill, it was thought of as very much of an urban area for largely commercial use, and obviously the nature of downtown being what it is, this would increase the value of the property tremendously. The hill had gone through many studies, one of which had been done by an engineer named Babcock. Henry, was it? Henry [A.] Babcock. Anyway, he made a study of tearing down the buildings on it and bulldozing it to be level with the rest of the downtown area. This was not his idea.

LASKEY

Just remove the whole hill?

ALEXANDER

Oh, yeah. [laughter]

LASKEY

Terrific.

ALEXANDER

You wouldn't know it today, you probably wouldn't notice it, but some of that was done. This was considered necessary, to remove some of the hill. That would have eliminated, naturally, everything on that portion that was reduced in height. The entire thing was remodeled somewhat in contours by taking a big slice off the top and making it somewhat easier to surmount, and the street pattern was removed. For instance. Bunker Hill Street, I think it was, was removed right through the center of Bunker Hill Towers, that was vacated. So a lot of things had to be done that could not be done with existing buildings the way they were. Incidentally, some of the buildings were six-story tenements that were right down near the corner of Fifth and Flower, wooden. They had been designed by Donald Parkinson. What was the old man's name? Was it Donald?

LASKEY

I think Donald was the son.

ALEXANDER

All right, John Parkinson. John Parkinson told me that when he first came to Los Angeles from Canada they needed housing because a big boom was on. I don't remember what year this was, but he had had quite a bit of experience in building six-story, wood-frame buildings. And Douglas fir, which was the commonest wood and still is the most common wood for construction, does not shrink in its length--in other words, in the direction in which the tree grows. Redwood does, but Douglas fir does not. So he never expected any major shrinkage in this building, even though it was six stories high. But he put his transom on these buildings a few months after they were built, and they had shrunk something like six or seven inches in height because the wood was so wet from its journey down from Oregon on open ships. It had come right off of the ship and into the building. Well, those six-story tenements were a real mess. I went through them with Frank [B.] Wilkinson, and they were rabbit warrens of a family to a room, that sort of thing.

LASKEY

Now, Frank Wilkinson was head of the public housing authority at that time?

ALEXANDER

I think he was community relations employee of the housing authority, public housing authority.

LASKEY

Was this happening while he was under attack? Well, you were under attack also. What was the politics of the city at the time?

ALEXANDER

Well, there was no opposition to declaring Bunker Hill [blighted] . There was no opposition to forming a redevelopment agency and had not been any to forming a housing authority. The opposition to redevelopment started, of course, as soon as someone refused to negotiate for the sale of property and it was condemned. And virtually none of the Bunker Hill property was owned by residents of Bunker Hill. Most of it by the old families of Los Angeles. May I name a few?

LASKEY

Of course.

ALEXANDER

Just guess who headed the list. I should say that when that group of architects went back to Washington before the war with their project for Bunker Hill, they found that bitter opposition had preceded them. Aside from the law being declared unconstitutional later, some of the "first families" objected to the tearing down of such lucrative places as whorehouses and gambling dens. They may not have known to what extent that was true, but this is what I heard at the time.

LASKEY

On the hill itself?

ALEXANDER

Yes. So that the opposition to acquiring the property came not from residents, although some of them were stirred up to make a protest. But they were not involved in the condemnation. The people who were involved had plenty of money to fight it, and they fought it. And as I say, it took some twenty years before the legal status was cleared and the property was cleared and new streets were developed and new streetlights and this, that, and the other. Finally, after twenty years of sweating it out-- Bill Sesnon was still chairman of the agency; other members had changed over a period of time. And the first project was not on top of the hill, but it was the Union Bank Square at the bottom of the hill. And that was designed by Wallace [K.] Harrison of New York City, who had been my employer once. He was the architect of the UN [United Nations Building] .

LASKEY

Union Bank.

ALEXANDER

The Union Bank was designed by Harrison and [Max] Abramovitz. It may have been designed by Abramovitz. I don't know. But Harrison was a beaux-arts trained architect, and the local architects associated with him were A. C. Martin and Associates. They provided the engineering for earthquake safety, etc. [tape recorder off]

LASKEY

Howard Holtzendorff is a name that I've run across in the research, and I was wondering what his involvement was.

ALEXANDER

In what?

LASKEY

In Bunker Hill, and also what your involvement with him in planning was.

ALEXANDER

Well, he was director of the public housing authority after it had funds to operate. Walter [W.] Alley had been the director when they didn't have any funds. Did I discuss the Estrada Courts?

LASKEY

Your designing of the Estrada Courts? How you came to do that? Yeah, we talked about that earlier.

ALEXANDER

Well, later, I think Holtzendorff was the second director. And he was a stout, powerful individual, a wheeler-dealer and, I thought, an excellent public administrator. I'm confident his heart was in the right place; at the same time he knew how to make a bureaucracy work. I had great admiration for his skill. He and Bowron got along well together; he and the city council got along well together; he got along well with the labor unions, etc. , etc. He got his head in a buzz saw, just the way we did, when the real estate lobby decided to eliminate public housing from California, and the nation if possible. Howard took a lot of flak that was completely undeserved in my opinion. But he was still director of the agency when Bunker Hill was demolished, and he was responsible for setting up a rental agency on Bunker Hill to try to get the tenants to see that they could move without too much pain into better housing for less money or the same cost, not more than what they were paying. He defended Frank Wilkinson to the extent that he could, up to a point. I guess ultimately he did not. But he was under fire for many, many years. It was only when-- When was it? Well, it was after [Harry S.] Truman got his housing bill passed in 1947 or '49--

LASKEY

It would be '49 because Truman became president-- Well, no, actually he became president before '48, didn't he, when Roosevelt died.

ALEXANDER

Well, it was after his election, so it was probably '49. And that's when the public housing hit the fan. I knew Howard intimately because we were-- Well, I must have described the meeting that he had with me at the Jonathan Club.

LASKEY

The Jonathan Club. Why don't you repeat it anyway. I don't remember it.

ALEXANDER

Well, he asked me to lunch and he told me that since I had been his only supporter in the architectural profession--for whatever it took, I was speaking in public in favor of it--that I could have any housing project I wanted. And I told him I wanted this little one out at Pacoima, because I figured I could have that all to myself and I didn't want a lot of joint ventures. And he said, "Well, I don't want you to do that one. I want you to do the Chavez Ravine. You do have to have one other guy, and he has to be a prestige guy." Well, that was Howard Holtzendorff . I don't know what else you want me to say about Howard. He ultimately had to bite the dust when Bowron did.

LASKEY

No, I was just curious about his involvement in the time that we're talking about.

ALEXANDER

Well, we were all still going at that point.

LASKEY

There were two redevelopment agencies. The California Redevelopment Agency and the CRA [Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency] that's so powerful today. Wasn ' t there a previous CHA under Bowron? Did one lead to the other?

ALEXANDER

The PHA, [California] Public Housing Agency, was the housing authority, and that was a separate agency under the state. The community redevelopment agency, the CRA, was the only one as far as I know, from the inception.

LASKEY

I had thought that there was another, and that was another reason I was asking you about Holtzendorff , to try to get the chronology- -

ALEXANDER

Well, he was not only director of the PHA, but he was a member of that first board of the CRA as well.

LASKEY

Oh, he was on the CRA as well.

ALEXANDER

He was on the board there. In the other case he was an employee, he was the director. In the case of the community redevelopment agency, he was a member of the first board appointed by Bowron, as a board member. There were five members.

LASKEY

Now, who was the director of the CRA? Do you recall?

ALEXANDER

To begin with? I should remember, but I don't. He had been in federal housing at the regional level. I just don't recall now.

LASKEY

Now, you were not on the city planning commission at this time?

ALEXANDER

I was at the time of Chavez Ravine, but not at this time at all. I had just resigned from being campus consulting architect at UCSD [University of California, San Diego] . I just resigned from that. And before I had resigned from that, incidentally, the second item that the CRA put up for sale was the site for housing at the top of the hill. It included some of the bottom of the hill, too. And the first attempt that I made to become involved in that was asking Carlos Tovares, with whom I was working around the university--I mentioned his name before--to organize a group that would be interested in housing in Bunker Hill. So he turned to a couple of homebuilders, and although they had all been accustomed to building one-story subdivisions, he convinced them to go for, what would you call it, bungalows in the sky or whatever. Well, they had had no experience in this sort of thing--they were homebuilders. And we were getting along pretty well in making a presentation, and proposals were requested by the agency .

LASKEY

I want to ask you a question relative to that. The housing that you're talking about, are you talking about general housing or are you talking about low-cost housing? Because I think there was a provision in the development of Bunker Hill--I don't know whether it was from the CRA or from the government--that a certain percentage had to be low-cost housing.

ALEXANDER

That was required by the [Los Angeles City] Council. The city council has to approve a plan, first of all to make a finding that it qualifies under the law as being uneconomic land and buildings, and second, to approve or modify the proposed plan. And in that case they indicated a certain amount of housing was called for in the plan, and they said that a certain proportion of that has to be for low- or moderate-income people. This has been built since then on Hill Street. But the first housing didn't have to be. I forget what the proportion was. So we were going to make a proposal on the first offering of land for housing on the hill. This was the first land after the Union Bank Square land that was put on the market. Well, we had several meetings in my office, which was still in the Mobil Building, and we finally got around to the last days before we would make this formal proposal to the agency. Carlos was in England working on the [English] Channel crossing tunnel. Thus he was not in the meeting. And suddenly to my surprise--I thought they knew it already--these guys started talking about its proximity to the civic center. "Aren't there a lot of black people" --or they would say Negroes-- "working there? Will they be permitted to live there?" I said, "Of course!"