#biddymason

Mary Colter (1869 - 1958): Architect and Designer 

The former Harvey Company restaurant at Union Station (1939). 📸: Elizabeth Daniels

Fans of the classic Judy Garland musical The Harvey Girls need look no further than Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to walk in the shoes of the famed chain of railroad rest stop eateries: the Fred Harvey restaurants. The Harvey Company, along with the Santa Fe Railway, boosted the Southwest as tourist destination during the late 19th century, and the famous “Harvey Girls”—waitresses “of good character” and adventurous spirit—helped popularize Southwest travel. 

The Union Station location was designed by the pioneering Mary Colter, who was an architect for the Harvey Company from 1904 to 1949. She was one of the earliest architects—male or female—to give American buildings a sense of place and one of a very few number of women architects working during the early 20th century. 

Best known for her buildings at the Grand Canyon, she’s been called "the best-known unknown architect in the national parks." And her signature Southwest spirit is on full display at her Union Station location. Opened in 1939, the restaurant features both Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco designs— reflecting the spirit of Union Station itself—while still incorporating Southwestern elements, including the floor, which was designed to resemble a Navajo rug. Its distinct tiled walls display a parrot motif; Valencia Spanish Tile Company manufactured these tiles especially for this building. 

The former Fred Harvey Restaurant space reopened on October 2018 as the Imperial Western Beer Company.

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Helen Liu Fong (1927 - 2005) : Architect and Interior Designer 

Pann’s Restaurant (1958). 📸: Stephen Schafer

Few women, let alone Chinese American women, were practicing architects in postwar America. But Helen Liu Fong not only excelled at her art--her works remain among some of the most loved among Angelenos even to this day. Fong was born in Los Angeles’ Old Chinatown in 1927. She received a degree in city planning from UC Berkeley in 1949. 

Upon graduation, she moved back to Los Angeles and got her first job working as a secretary for architect Eugene Choy, where she learned the administrative side of architecture. Two years later, she began working for Armet and Davis, located in the same office building as Choy’s firm, where she remained until the late 1970s. Best known for her Googie-style design work, Fong seamlessly integrated interior and exterior elements. (The rich reds you'll find in many of Fong's designs, for example, were strategic: the color could register from the roadside.) 

Fong also commissioned a variety of talented artists to custom create artwork, murals, and clocks, among other things. Perhaps her most popular work—and certainly the best preserved—is the iconic Pann’s Coffee Shop on La Tijera Boulevard in Westchester. (But you’re guaranteed to find some of her other designs, namely Norms on La Cienega Boulevard and Johnnie’s Coffee Shop, pop up regularly on your Instagram feed. ;) 

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Greta Magnusson-Grossman (1906 - 1999): Architect, Furniture Designer, Interior Designer 

The Greta Magnusson-Grossman residence (1948). 📸: Hilton + Hyland

Greta Magnusson Grossman was one of the few female professionals to play an integral role in the Los Angeles Modern movement. 

From the 1940s to the 1960s, she was the only female architect to own an independent practice in Los Angeles. Grossman had been an award-winning designer in her native Sweden, but fled to America to escape the Nazi regime. She and her husband settled in Los Angeles in the late ‘40s where she wasted no time in setting up her own studio, launching a cutting-edge brand of Swedish Modernism. 

She was a hit among a progressive set of Angelenos, with clients including powerful women in the film industry like Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman—fellow Swedes, both—and was lauded by contemporaries and critics. She designed 14 residences in Los Angeles, all based on the Case Study House design principles, including the Nelson Houses in the Hollywood Hills. With their simple Mid-Century Modern lines and their breathtaking views, the Nelson Houses are an excellent example of Grossman's residential designs, and proof that she undoubtedly helped define California Modernism. 

Although her work has gained the recognition it deserves over the years, her architectural legacy lies in jeopardy with only a scant handful of her work remaining. 

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Biddy Mason (1818-1891): Entrepreneur and Philanthropist 

The Biddy Mason Memorial. 📸: L.A. Conservancy

Bridget "Biddy" Mason is an American hero. Born a slave, Mason endured decades of hardship before winning her freedom and becoming one of Los Angeles' wealthiest citizens, and most celebrated philanthropists. In 1847, at almost thirty years old, Mason walked more than 2,000 miles behind her owner's wagon, from Mississippi to Utah and then California … her small children at her side. 

When she arrived here in 1851, California had been a state for less than a year. It had been admitted into the Union as a free state. Even so, many slaves, including Mason, were not free. Black settlers had a tight-knit community in Los Angeles, ensuring newcomers, like Mason, knew their rights under California law. 

With their support, Mason sued for and won her freedom in a landmark court case in 1856. Mason became a midwife and parlayed her earnings into real estate, establishing a homestead on what is present-day Broadway and Spring Street in 1866. She continued to invest in land and accumulated a relatively large fortune, carving for herself a prominent place in the community. "Aunt Biddy," as she was lovingly known, founded the First AME Church in her home, opened schools, and was a constant source of support to the growing settlement of Black Angelenos. 

The Los Angeles of Mason’s day is all but gone, but you can follow her legacy and remarkable achievements at Biddy Mason Memorial Park. Behind the Bradbury Building, where her original homestead was built, the artwork "Biddy Mason's Place: A Passage of Time" commemorates her incredible journey. 

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Julia Morgan (1872 - 1957): Architect and Engineer 

The Marion Davies Guest House (1929). 📸: The Annenberg Community Beach House

Julia Morgan was one of California’s most influential architects. Truly ahead of her time, she was California’s first licensed woman architect and one of the most influential--and prolific-- architects in the state: By the time of her death in 1957, she had designed an estimated 700 buildings, mostly in California. 

Perhaps most famous for her work for magnate William Randolph Hearst--namely, Hearts’s Castle in San Simeon--Los Angeles is home to some of her most significant structures: The Herald Examiner Building (1914) and the Marion Davies Estate in Santa Monica (1929), both for W.R. Hearst. The Examiner building was the first large-scale project she would design for Hearst, designed in the Mission Revival style of architecture popular throughout Southern California in the early twentieth century. The red tile roof and blue and yellow tiled domes make the building a visible landmark on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. 

Out in Santa Monica, the Annenberg Community Beach House occupies part of what was Morgan’s spectacular estate for actress Marion Davies. Commissioned by Davies’ life partner W.R. Hearst, Morgan designed an estate befitting the major movie star: it was a mansion of 100- plus rooms, featuring an ornate marble swimming pool. As was the case with Hearst Castle to the north, the Marion Davies Beach was a popular and exclusive destination for Old Hollywood’s biggest stars. 

The main mansion was demolished in 1956, but the Beach House thrives today as a year-round public beach facility. 

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Norma Merrik Sklarek (1926 - 2012): Architect 

The Pacific Design Center (1975). 📸: WikiCommons

Dubbed "the Rosa Parks of architecture," Sklarek's courage, talent, and ambition led to a trailblazing career that forged a place for herself in an industry dominated by men. When she received her B.Arch from Columbia in 1950, Sklarek was just one of two women and the only Black person in the graduating class. 

With both her gender and race against her, Sklarek's self-described "stick-to-it" attitude resulted in her becoming the first Black woman to join the American Institute of Architects, in 1959. In 1960, Sklarek moved to Los Angeles and joined the firm Gruen and Associates. 

Later, after becoming California's first Black woman to be a licensed architect in 1962, she became the firm's director of architecture—the first woman in the company to hold that position. The California Mart (1963) was one of her earliest projects and she also worked on such iconic projects as the Pacific Design Center's "blue whale" (1975). 

In 1985, Sklarek scored another "first" as co-founder of what was then one of the largest woman-owned firms in the country: Siegel, Sklarek and Diamond. She became a mentor to many aspiring young women architects and architects of color: