La Jolla Woman's Club

The La Jolla Woman's Club is a historic building in La Jolla, a neighborhood of San Diego, California. Designed and built by Irving Gill with assistance from his nephew Louis John Gill in 1914-1915, it is an important example of Gill's modern architectural style, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

La Jolla Woman's Club
The western (front) side of the La Jolla Woman's Club
Location715 Silverado St., La Jolla, California
Coordinates32°50′39″N 117°16′36″W
Area0.6 acres (0.24 ha)
Built1914 (1914)
ArchitectIrving John Gill
NRHP reference No.74000546[1]
Added to NRHPNovember 5, 1974

History

The La Jolla Woman's Club was founded in 1894 as the Current Events Club, taking its present name in 1900. The social club was without a permanent home for the first twenty years of its existence.[2] The cornerstone of the building was laid in December 1913, with the inaugural meeting held in 1914.[2]

The site, design, and construction of the clubhouse were all donated to the La Jolla Woman's Club by philanthropist and club member Ellen Browning Scripps. The project cost a total of $40,000.[3] The building is a prime example of Irving Gill's modern style, exemplified by simple geometrical shapes, and generous use of arches and columns, with a minimum of ornamentation.[3] This style has been described as "shaved Spanish," as it owes much to the colonial Spanish architecture of southern California - and in particular the California missions - with an emphasis on flat rooflines, and lack of frills.[4] The building also was a product of Gill's experimentation with the concrete "tilt-wall" construction method, in which concrete slabs were poured in place onto a large table positioned at a fifteen-degree angle. After it was set, the wall was lifted into place, and windows fitted into it.[3] The interior of the building also showcases Gill's interest in sanitation: there are no baseboards, mouldings, or other design details, as Gill believed that these features trapped dust and dirt.[3] The La Jolla Woman's Club has been called one of Gill's most successful works.[5]

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and is one of several notable Gill-designed buildings in La Jolla, along with The Bishop's School and the La Jolla Recreation Center. The clubhouse is open to visitors on Saturdays from 9:00 am to noon.[3]

gollark: They can read poetry on their own if you want.
gollark: No.
gollark: Also study skills and independent research.
gollark: We should retool basic education around more practical stuff, problem-solving, rationality, statistics, probability, sort of thing, in my opinion, not "spend 5 hours writing an essay on some nonsense about a poem".
gollark: Ignorance is just not knowing stuff, so yes it can.

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. Who's Who Among the Women of California. 1922. p.86.
  3. LeBlanc, Sydney. The Architecture Traveler: A Guide to 250 Key Twentieth-Century American Buildings. 2000. p. 24.
  4. Kidder Smith, G.E. Source Book of American Architecture. 1996. p. 337.
  5. Kaplan, Wendy. "Building Utopia,", from Modernism in Design, Paul Greenhalgh, ed. 1990. p.106.
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