SPANISH PATIOS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 
By Kate Greenleaf Locke. 
^ I "LI AT the honor of producing a new style 
ol architecture will hereafter be set 
down to the credit of Southern California is 
beginning to be acknowledged. This style, 
so recently born and yet so distinctive, is a 
conglomerate composed of efflorescent Span¬ 
ish and Moorish features molded in with the 
severe and heavy (but always picturesque) 
lines of the old California mission buildings. 
All of this, in turn, is modified and adapted 
through a practical sense of the luxuries of 
our most modern civilization. Thus as it 
stands it represents to-day a blending of three 
widely separated historic epochs—the con¬ 
quest of Spain by the Moors, the subduing 
and proselyting of the Indians by the old 
Spanish fathers and the settling of this 
Arcadian part of the world by the wealthiest 
class in America. 
It is admitted that the architecture of a 
country should be the practical outgrowth 
of its climatic needs and conditions, and when 
we visit the land of orange groves, of olives 
and lemon trees, of bananas and caladiums, 
of a maximum of sunshine and a minimum 
of shadow we are glad that there are both 
architects and clients who have grasped all 
of its delightful possibilities. The villas 
that hang upon the hillsides in France and 
Italy would find a congenial environment 
here where mountains alternate with plains, 
and rugged foot-hills may be softened in out¬ 
line by a tropical growth; but while these 
latter have not yet “arrived” the Spanish 
house with its patio and plastered arch, its 
porches and oftentimes its roof-gardens, 
appears at frequent intervals. I he inhabi¬ 
tants have not yet realized that the slope of a 
terraced descent below the guardianship of a 
monster mountain, may be most picturesquely 
broken by a bit of stuccoed wall; that the 
roses which bloom riotously in the formal 
garden near the house would show a dashing 
bit of crimson, or pink, or yellow, if trained 
to cover such a wall among the trees of a hill¬ 
side; but they have come to know that the 
life which may be designated as “half indoors 
and half out,” is wholly fascinating in this 
delectable climate; hence the patio. 
The two views given of a house of this 
A PASADENA HOUSE IN THE MISSION STYLE 
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