HOUSE AND GARDEN 
18 
July, 1914 
A well-designed house gives the impression of fitness. Bare though it may be, this house imparts the feeling 
that it belongs to its environment 
An open court or a roofed arcade, with walls in dun neutral tones, supplant the front porch, giving privacy 
to the outdoor rooms 
Here, in his almost elimination of wood, the door frames and windows are sunk flush with the wall 
ties, Swiss chalets, Italian villas, English 
manor-houses, French chateaux, and the in¬ 
digenous growth of flimsy frame houses 
whose most characteristic features are ex¬ 
cessive jigsaw ornamentation and a front 
stoop. That the borrowed styles are beauti¬ 
ful or well copied is beside the point. They 
are mere imitations, and as such are funda¬ 
mentally false and insincere when trans¬ 
planted bodily to the United States. 
It happens that Mr. Gill has done most of 
his work in California, which gives rise in 
some minds to the thought that he has found 
his inspiration in the work of the mission 
builders. This he would quickly deny, save 
such inspiration as comes to any builder in 
contemplation of the work of others who 
wrought in sincerity, with definite purpose, 
striving for and achieving fitness. Such in¬ 
spiration may be found in a bird’s nest, a 
beaver’s dam, a Greek temple, a log cabin on 
the frontier, but in direct proportion as they 
inspire, they lessen the tendency toward 
thoughtless imitation. 
He sometimes uses the arcade, which has 
come to be associated in the lay mind with 
the California missions, but a study of the 
details that differentiate architectural man¬ 
ners will show his arcades and those of the 
padres widely dissimilar. He may use a 
Dutch door or a tile roof, but that does not 
mark his work as Flemish or Florentine. As 
a stranger often remarks in two faces a like¬ 
ness neutralized by many differences, so com¬ 
ing upon a Gill house for the first time one 
may be reminded of something seen in old 
Spain, of a villa in Lombardy, a house in 
Algiers, an Indian pueblo in the western 
desert. But closer study reveals essential 
differences in detail, dissipating the strength 
of suggested likenesses. In many of these 
houses the walls, like those of an Indian 
pueblo, rise sheer and roofless to an abrupt 
sky-line, and there are courts and terraces 
similar to those of a pueblo, but a Gill house 
is a far cry from the aboriginal dwelling. 
At the very beginning of his career Mr. 
Gill conceived that he had a mission. That 
mission was to preach a gospel of the beauty 
of use, and the use of perfect simplicity. He 
had that to say which a few were ready to 
hear, and while a gospel so artless could not 
gain instant popularity, the number of his 
converts would be flattering to one less in 
earnest in his ultimate purpose, and the im¬ 
press of this unusual genius is conspicuous 
even in California, which has won wide re¬ 
nown for architectural individuality. 
Reduced to the utmost brevity, Mr. Gill's 
credo in architecture is the negation of the 
non-essential. He has an unequivocal faith 
in the architectural beauty of plain surfaces, 
simple curves, and straight lines. And one is 
compelled by his work, as rarely save by some 
classic ruin, to recognize the subtle potency 
of proportion. In excess of ornamentation 
