Louise Ivers: Professor's View of Local Architecture Honored by Long Beach Heritage

Long Beach Heritage will bestow a 2006 Merit Award on Louise Ivers, professor and chair of the California State University, Dominguez Hills Visual Arts Department, at its Preservation Awards Benefit and Silent Auction on Feb. 16 in the Queen Mary’s Grand Salon. The award is for Ivers’ photographs and publications on Long Beach architecture.

When Ivers moved to Long Beach in the early 1970s, just after coming to Dominguez Hills to teach, she took photographs of the architecture in the city. She was excited to see so many old buildings, she says, especially those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, her primary period of interest.

“I photographed them,” she recalls, “and I had drawers full of them. Then, at about the same time I photographed all those buildings designed by [W. Horace] Austin in the early 1900s and by some other architects, they started tearing the buildings down. I’m glad I took those photos.” Austin, the first architect of any note to locate his office in Long Beach, became known by the time of his death in 1942 as “the dean of architects in Long Beach.” Austin, she says, borrowed from many styles: Classic Revival, Mission Revival, Art Deco, California Bungalow, Swiss Chalet, Spanish, Tudor, and Gothic. He helped define the style that now is known as Eclecticism. Although he designed buildings all over Southern California, almost all of his buildings were victims of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake or of later development. Only photographs, such as those in Ivers’ extensive collection, retain his legacy.

Ivers’ interest in architecture prompted her to publish a number of catalogs and to organize four exhibitions of architecture on that period, all held at the University Art Gallery on the CSUDH campus. Her most recent was one on Austin, “An Architectural Stylist: W. Horace Austin and Eclecticism in California,” in April, 2005. The others were “Modernistic Architecture in Long Beach,” “The Architecture of Cecil Schilling” and “Hugh Davies, Architect and Innovator.”

–Russell Hudson