It’s a shame that Irving Gill’s magnificent Walter L. Dodge House was torn down one February morning in 1970, to be replaced with a bland condominium complex. It was a masterpiece. This photograph is proof.  

Gill developed a formal architectural vocabulary that would not only predict the celebrated California Modernism of the 1950s and 1960s but proved indispensable to the evolution of the Modernist movement. His most famous project, the Dodge House, is a pivotal piece of modern architecture, its tilt-slab construction, formal simplicity, and abstracted composition boldly anticipating the future of design. 

​Constructed between 1914 and 1916 and located on Kings Road in West Hollywood, just north of the future site of Schindler’s 1921 house , the expansive estate was commissioned by Walter Luther Dodge, an entrepreneur who made millions selling a popular foot bath tablet (TIZ). Relocating from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Dodge hired Gill, then a well-established San Diego architect, to design a spacious modern home in the leafy confines of West Hollywood. Embodying Gill's reductive and efficient approach, the Dodge House was a series of concrete cubist masses effortlessly integrated with its surrounding landscape. With an emphasis on unadorned surfaces, flat rooflines, and repetitive arches, the residence takes from California’s Spanish traditions as well as Gill’s interest in minimal forms, a successful blending of classical proportions and composition (the cube against the arch) with an uncompromisingly modernist sensibility. 

On the interior, Gill's meticulous execution of details like coved walls that prevented the collection of dust, cabinets painted with an easy to clean white enamel, and rooms with perfectly framed views of the well-manicured gardens made for a modern and efficient residential machine.   

Photographer:  Julius Shulman

Subject: “Dodge House” (1954)

Location: West Hollywood CA.

Lot:  1765.1

Year: 1954

Unframed on photography board Image size: 15” x 17.5 “.  

Signed on recto by Julius Shulman at his Hollywood Hills Studio. 

Image is in good condition.