Architect

Cyril Bennett

1891–1957

Profile

About Cyril Bennett.

Cyril Bennett practiced in Pasadena from 1914 until 1941 across three sequential firm configurations: J. Cyril Bennett, Architect (1914 to 1923), Bennett and Haskell with Fitch Haskell (1924 to 1934), and Bennett and Bennett with his son Robert E. Bennett (1947 to 1955). He trained for seven years as a draftsman under Sylvanus Marston before opening his own practice in April 1914. His Pasadena Civic Auditorium (1932, with George Bergstrom and Fitch Haskell), Pasadena Playhouse Fannie E. Morrison Annex (1936), Raymond Theatre (1921), and Colonial Court bungalow grouping (1916, NRHP 1983) are all still standing. He worked across the full period revival range and was named in the 2004 City of Pasadena Period Revival Architecture report as one of the most prominent residential period revival architects of the 1915 to 1942 span, alongside Reginald D. Johnson, Wallace Neff, Roland Coate, and Myron Hunt.

Cyril Bennett was the architect Pasadena turned to when it wanted a building to last. He designed the Pasadena Civic Auditorium (1932, with George Bergstrom and Fitch Haskell), the Raymond Theatre (1921), the 1936 Fannie E. Morrison Annex at the Pasadena Playhouse, the La Pintoresca Branch Library (c. 1930), and the Colonial Court bungalow grouping at 291 to 301 North Garfield Avenue (1916, listed on the National Register of Historic Places July 11, 1983). Between 1914 and 1941 he also produced dozens of single-family residences across Pasadena, San Rafael Heights, the Linda Vista area, and Prospect Square.

For a buyer looking at a Pasadena period revival house from that span, Bennett on a title chain or in a city building record is a marker of period-correct work. His firm did civic-grade buildings and carried that discipline into residences. The proportions hold up. The materials were specified to age. The buildings were detailed by an architect who had trained for seven years as a draftsman under Sylvanus Marston before opening his own office in 1914. That detail matters because Marston ran one of the most disciplined practices in early Pasadena, and Bennett’s residences carry the same logic: balanced massing, restrained ornament, well-proportioned openings, and consistent material specification from foundation to ridge.

Bennett practiced in Pasadena for twenty-seven working years across three configurations: J. Cyril Bennett, Architect (1914 to 1923), Bennett and Haskell (1924 to 1934), and Bennett and Bennett (1947 to 1955, with his son Robert E. Bennett). His Pasadena Civic Auditorium opened February 15, 1932, and remains the third leg of a public-buildings campaign that began with City Hall and the Public Library. His Raymond Theatre, his Colonial Court bungalow grouping, the La Pintoresca Branch Library, and his contribution to the Pasadena Playhouse are all still standing. Colonial Court is individually listed on the National Register, and the Civic Auditorium is a contributing structure to the National Register-listed Pasadena Civic Center Historic District (NRHP 80000813). The Pasadena Playhouse is California Historical Landmark No. 887.

Early life and training

Cyril Bennett was born John Cyril Bennett on June 21, 1891, in Hereford, England, and moved with his family to Chicago at three months of age before the family relocated to California. He attended the University of California, Berkeley from 1907 to 1910 and took a Bachelor of Architecture degree there. He was naturalized as a US citizen on January 22, 1915, in Los Angeles.

While at Berkeley and immediately after, Bennett worked as a draftsman in the Pasadena office of Sylvanus Marston from 1907 to 1914. Marston’s practice was already producing the bungalow courts and period revival residences that would define early-twentieth-century Pasadena. Seven years inside that office gave Bennett a direct line into the working conventions of the city’s architectural establishment. When he opened his own practice in April 1914, he opened it inside the same Pasadena community Marston had been serving for a decade. Bennett married Olivia Cobb on April 16, 1913, and they had two children, Robert and Margaret. Throughout his career he signed his work as J. Cyril Bennett, which is how it appears in city directories, building permits, and the great majority of period publications.

The Pasadena practice (1914 to 1941)

Bennett ran three sequential practice configurations from a Pasadena office for twenty-seven working years, with an architectural output that ranged from $20,000 single-family houses to a $1.25 million civic auditorium. He partnered with Fitch Haskell in 1924, and the two practiced as Bennett and Haskell until 1934. He then returned to solo practice from 1935 to 1941 with an office at 595 East Colorado Boulevard, Room 311.

The Bennett and Haskell partnership produced the Pasadena Civic Auditorium with George Bergstrom (in a three-firm collaboration formally credited as Bergstrom, Bennett, and Haskell, Associated Architects), the Rufus C. Mead Auditorium (1931), the Harry FitzGerald, Inc. shop at 489 East Colorado Boulevard (1926), and the La Pintoresca Branch Library (c. 1930). It also produced the Holliston Avenue Methodist Church Sunday School Building (c. 1925), a two-story brick and stone structure at Holliston and Colorado contracted at $60,000.

Bennett shifted out of active architectural practice in 1941 to take the presidency of the 1st Trust and Savings Bank of Pasadena, a position he held for sixteen years until retiring one year before his death. During the war, he led the Pasadena war bonds drive. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly cited Bennett for selling more war bonds per capita in Pasadena than in any other American city of similar size. From 1947 to 1955, Bennett and his son Robert E. Bennett practiced as Bennett and Bennett, primarily handling additions and alterations including work at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Major civic and commercial works

Bennett’s largest single project was the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, opened February 15, 1932, designed in three-firm association with George Edwin Bergstrom and Fitch Haskell. The exterior is Italian Renaissance Revival and the interior detailing is Mediterranean Revival with Greek influences. The auditorium seats 2,997 and was the third major civic building completed for Pasadena, after City Hall and the Public Library.

The Civic was a deliberate composition. The main façade is set well back from Green Street to allow a large civic plaza, and the building faces north up Garfield Avenue toward the Public Library. The exterior terra cotta and tilework is by Jess Stanton (executed by Gladding, McBean and Company), the ceiling design is by Giovanni Smeraldi, and the structure carries a counterweight fly system with a 75-foot grid height for stage rigging. The project cost roughly $1.25 million and was funded by the City’s Water and Power Department.

The Raymond Theatre (1921)

The Raymond Theatre at 129 North Raymond Avenue (PCAD building/753) was Bennett’s first major commercial commission, designed at age thirty for Henry Christian Jensen and his Jensen Theatre Corporation. It opened as a vaudeville and silent-film house in 1921 and became one of Old Pasadena’s defining street walls. The theater operated through multiple ownership changes until the 1980s, and after a long preservation fight, was adaptively reused for residential.

Pasadena Playhouse, Fannie E. Morrison Annex (1936)

The original Pasadena Playhouse at 39 South El Molino Avenue was designed in 1924 to 1925 by Elmer Grey and A. Dwight Gibbs in Spanish Colonial Revival style. Bennett designed the Fannie E. Morrison Annex in 1936, a six-story concrete structure built to house the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, the accredited program that trained Raymond Burr, Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman. The annex carries the same Spanish Colonial Revival vocabulary as the original main building.

Colonial Court (1916)

Colonial Court at 291 to 301 North Garfield Avenue is a six-house bungalow grouping arranged around a narrow courtyard. Bennett designed it in 1916 in his second year of independent practice, in a Colonial Revival vocabulary using clapboard siding and jerkinhead roofs (a hipped-gable hybrid that softens the gable end). The court was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 11, 1983, NRHP reference number 83001185, as part of the Bungalow Courts of Pasadena thematic resource.

Residential catalog

Bennett designed dozens of Pasadena, San Rafael Heights, Linda Vista, and Prospect Square residences across his three practice configurations, in a working range from $20,000 single-family houses to substantial estates. The 2004 City of Pasadena Period Revival Architecture report classes him as one of the most prominent residential period revival architects of the 1915 to 1942 span, alongside Reginald D. Johnson, Wallace Neff, Roland Coate, and Myron Hunt.

Documented Bennett residential work includes the Batterson House (1921, Pasadena), a Colonial Revival house in Prospect Square (1921, costed at $20,000), an early Bennett and Haskell residence at South San Rafael Avenue and La Loma Road in San Rafael Heights (1924), the C. Newell Residence in Linda Vista (1928), and the house at 1155 North Hill Avenue (Italian Revival, mid-1920s). The Linda Vista, San Rafael Heights, and Prospect Square neighborhoods carry the heaviest concentration of his houses.

For a buyer, an attribution to Bennett or to Bennett and Haskell in a property’s building permit history or in a Pasadena city directory from the working years is a useful authenticity marker. The houses tend to have correctly proportioned period façades, well-detailed entry compositions, and good interior trim. Material specifications were conservative for the period. That means Douglas fir framing with oak or fir trim, real lime or gypsum plaster coats over wood lath, and original window assemblies in the period-correct profile (wood casement or double-hung).

Style vocabulary

Bennett worked across the full period revival range. His Pasadena Civic Auditorium is Italian Renaissance Revival on the exterior with Mediterranean Revival interior detailing. His Pasadena Playhouse annex is Spanish Colonial Revival. His Colonial Court is Colonial Revival. His Harry FitzGerald shop is Georgian Revival. His 1155 North Hill Avenue house is Italian Revival.

The cross-style range is typical of a working Pasadena period revival architect in the 1920s and 1930s, when clients selected style from a defined catalog and the architect’s job was to execute the chosen idiom in period-correct vocabulary. Bennett executed each style in its own working terms. A Bennett Colonial Revival house carries actual Colonial Revival proportioning, fenestration, trim, and roof geometry, not a generic period façade pasted onto a builder plan. The discipline carried over from his Marston training and held through his Bennett and Haskell partnership.

For more on the styles Bennett practiced, see Mediterranean Revival, Italian Renaissance Revival, and Spanish Colonial Revival.

Later career and legacy

Bennett shifted from active architectural practice into banking in 1941, taking the presidency of the 1st Trust and Savings Bank of Pasadena, where he served for sixteen years until retiring one year before his death. He continued to take selected architectural work through the Bennett and Bennett partnership from 1947 to 1955 with his son Robert E. Bennett, primarily on additions and alterations including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The Bennett and Bennett practice records survive in the Bennett and Bennett collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara Art, Design and Architecture Museum (Architecture and Design Collection, 1946 to 1973, three linear feet). Bennett is catalogued in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database as person ID 477. The Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the Colonial Court, the Pasadena Playhouse (including the Bennett-designed annex), and the Raymond Theatre are all still standing. The Pasadena Playhouse is California Historical Landmark No. 887 and National Register-listed (NRHP reference 75000435).

Bennett died at his home in Pasadena on May 25, 1957, at age 65. He trained as a draftsman under Sylvanus Marston and collaborated with Elmer Grey on the Pasadena Playhouse work. His son Robert E. Bennett continued the firm.

Styles

Associated Styles.

Works

Notable Works in the SGV.

Sources

Sources and references.

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