Architect

Gordon B. Kaufmann

1888–1949

Profile

About Gordon B. Kaufmann.

Pasadena resident 1916 through 1939, trained as draftsman in Reginald Johnson's Pasadena office 1916 to 1920, partner in Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate from 1921 to 1924 at 100 East Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena, with Pasadena, San Marino, Arcadia, and Claremont commissions spanning Period Revival residential through monumental institutional Streamline Moderne.

Gordon B. Kaufmann (1888 to 1949; Wikidata Q5585399) was an English-born American architect whose Southern California catalog included some of the most consequential institutional buildings of the San Gabriel Valley alongside national-scale industrial and civic monuments. He trained as a draftsman in Reginald Davis Johnson’s Pasadena office between 1916 and 1920, then partnered with Johnson and Roland Coate in the firm Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate from 1921 to 1924, working from offices at 100 East Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena. The firm produced large Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival residences for well-to-do San Gabriel Valley clients during the years Pasadena was establishing its residential identity. After the partnership dissolved in late 1924, Kaufmann ran his own Los Angeles practice through 1942 and went on to national prominence as supervising architect of the Hoover Dam complex (NRHP-listed April 8, 1981; National Historic Landmark designated August 20, 1985), designer of the Los Angeles Times Building (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1174, designated December 5, 2018), and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1938. For owners and buyers of San Gabriel Valley architecturally significant property doing architectural due diligence, the Kaufmann catalog matters because it spans early Period Revival residential work, the Caltech Athenaeum, the Scripps College campus in Claremont, the San Marino residence of Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan, and Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia.

The Pasadena training years and the Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate firm

Kaufmann arrived in Pasadena by 1916, having relocated from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he had run a small practice. He spent his first US years in Fresno and Los Angeles before settling in Pasadena and taking a draftsman position with Reginald Johnson, then one of the city’s most active residential architects. He worked under Johnson from roughly 1916 to 1920 and became a licensed California architect in 1920.

In 1921 Johnson elevated him to partner, and Roland Coate joined the same year, forming Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate. The Pasadena City Directory of 1921 placed the firm at 100 East Colorado Boulevard in what is now the Old Pasadena historic district. The partnership produced large Period Revival residences for well-to-do clients during what was effectively the formative period of Pasadena residential architecture. The firm dissolved on December 12, 1924, per the Southwest Builder and Contractor notice of that date, with Johnson, Coate, and Kaufmann all going on to substantial independent careers. The three-partner firm holds a specific place in San Gabriel Valley architectural history because each partner is independently documented, and the commissions of those four years sit at the intersection of three separate catalogs.

Pasadena institutional and residential commissions

After the firm dissolved, Kaufmann moved his office to Los Angeles in 1925 but continued to receive Pasadena commissions throughout his career.

The California Institute of Technology Athenaeum (1930) at 551 South Hill Avenue is the building most often used to introduce his work in the San Gabriel Valley. It served as the private faculty club for Caltech and was published in Architectural Digest and Architect and Engineer in the early 1930s. Six years earlier the Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate firm had designed the Hale Solar Laboratory (1924, NRHP-listed 1986 and National Historic Landmark designated 1989) at 740 Holladay Road in Pasadena, a small but historically significant astronomical research building commissioned by George Ellery Hale.

The All Saints’ Episcopal Church (1923 to 1924, NRHP 02000449 listed September 13, 2002) at 132 North Euclid Avenue in Pasadena was a major Period Revival commission completed during the Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate years. The Los Angeles Times announced the church on June 10, 1923, and Architectural Digest published it in 1931.

The Royal Laundry Company Office and Laundry Building (1927) at 443 South Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, with a Spanish Colonial Revival office wing and Art Deco additions completed around 1935, is one of the few surviving Kaufmann commercial buildings in the city.

The Griffith House (1924) in the Oak Knoll neighborhood is documented in Gebhard and Winter’s Architecture in Los Angeles: A Compleat Guide. Additional Pasadena residential work survives at 262 South San Rafael Avenue, the Fred G. Adamson residence (1927), documented by thirty-seven negatives in the William M. Clarke architectural negative collection at UCLA.

San Marino, Arcadia, and Claremont

The Robert Andrews Millikan House (1929) in San Marino was built for the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who led the California Institute of Technology. This commission places Kaufmann in the company of architects who designed for the SGV’s intellectual and civic elite during the late 1920s, contemporaries like Wallace Neff, Sylvanus Marston, and Reginald Johnson.

The Santa Anita Race Track #2 (1933 to 1934) in Arcadia is the racetrack as it stands today. Kaufmann designed it during his transition from Period Revival residential work to the monumental concrete style that would define his late career. It remains a landmark of Arcadia architecture.

In Claremont, on the eastern edge of the San Gabriel Valley, Kaufmann produced the largest single body of his SGV work. The Scripps College Master Plan (1926), developed with landscape architect Edward Huntsman-Trout, established the campus layout. Grace Scripps Clark Hall (1927 to 1928), Eleanor Joy Toll Hall (1927), the Scripps College Dormitory (1929), the Ella Strong Denison Library (1930 to 1931), and the Ellen Clark Revelle House (1928) were all his work. The campus is still considered one of the most coherent residential college plans in California. The Honnold-Mudd Library for the Claremont Colleges was designed by Kaufmann and completed in 1952, three years after his death, through the successor firm Kaufmann and Stanton.

Style range and the move into Streamline Moderne

Kaufmann’s early SGV work sat in the Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival modes that defined Pasadena residential architecture between 1915 and the mid-1930s. The Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate years produced large period-revival residences in those idioms, and his solo Caltech and Scripps work continued the language with restraint and academic gravity.

By the early 1930s he had begun developing the heavy concrete, Streamline Moderne style that would mark the second half of his career. The Hoover Dam (1931 to 1936) is the canonical example. The architectural treatment of the dam’s intake towers and powerhouse was Kaufmann’s. The Los Angeles Times Building (1931 to 1935) won him the Gold Medal at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. The Hollywood Palladium (1940), Santa Anita Race Track (1933 to 1934), and the wartime Park La Brea Housing Complex (1941 to 1948) extended the language across institutional and civic work.

For buyers evaluating a Kaufmann residential property in the San Gabriel Valley, the catalog window that matters is the Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate years (1921 to 1924) and the solo Pasadena residential work that continued into the early 1930s. The late-career institutional work is almost entirely outside residential.

A Pasadena resident among Pasadena architects

Kaufmann lived in Pasadena from 1916 through 1939. His addresses included a 1917 bungalow at 762 North Holliston Avenue in what is now the Bungalow Heaven Landmark District, addresses on La Loma Drive and La Loma Road in 1919 and 1920 (two doors from tilemaker Ernest A. Batchelder), 1600 East California Boulevard in 1921, 365 South Menton Avenue by 1923, and 620 South Sierra Bonita Avenue from 1933 to 1939. His daughter Cecil married Thomas E. Dawson and moved to Flintridge, sustaining the family’s San Gabriel Valley presence into the late 1940s.

This biographical detail matters for one reason: Kaufmann was not a Los Angeles architect who took Pasadena commissions. For more than two decades he was a Pasadena resident designing for a city he knew at the neighborhood scale, with Myron Hunt and Reginald Johnson as office neighbors and Wallace Neff as a generational peer in the residential field.

What to look for in a Kaufmann commission today

Period-correct authenticity assessment on a Kaufmann residence depends on which phase of his career produced the building. The Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate work from 1921 to 1924 and the solo residential through about 1930 sits in the Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival range. Plaster wall surfaces should read smooth or hand-troweled, not the heavier stucco textures introduced in later post-war reroofs. Tile roofs would have been clay barrel tile in two-color or mottled blends, not the uniform machine-extruded clay common after 1960. Window openings carried wood casements or steel casements with leaded glass in principal rooms; aluminum sash from any decade is a replacement signal. Interior plaster work, hand-forged iron hardware, and tile fireplaces from Batchelder, a Pasadena neighbor of Kaufmann’s during the late 1910s and 1920s, are the elements that distinguish a period Kaufmann interior from a later remodel.

The institutional commissions like the Caltech Athenaeum, the Scripps College buildings, and All Saints’ Church carry more documentation and tighter preservation oversight. Residential commissions vary widely in survival condition. The William M. Clarke negative collection at UCLA holds period photographs of several Pasadena Kaufmann residences that allow direct comparison to current condition.

Frequently asked questions

Was Gordon B. Kaufmann a Pasadena architect?

Yes, from 1916 through 1939. He trained in Reginald Johnson’s Pasadena office, partnered as Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate from 1921 to 1924 with offices at 100 East Colorado Boulevard, and lived at multiple Pasadena addresses across those decades. He moved his practice office to Los Angeles in 1925 but continued to receive Pasadena commissions throughout his career.

Which Kaufmann buildings are in the San Gabriel Valley?

The Caltech Athenaeum, Hale Solar Laboratory, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Royal Laundry Company, Griffith House, and Fred G. Adamson Residence in Pasadena. The Robert A. Millikan House in San Marino. Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia. The Scripps College master plan and several campus buildings, plus the Honnold-Mudd Library, in Claremont.

Is Kaufmann’s most famous building in the San Gabriel Valley?

No. His best-known works nationally are the Hoover Dam, where he served as supervising architect from 1931 to 1936, and the Los Angeles Times Building from 1931 to 1935, neither of which is in the San Gabriel Valley. His SGV institutional anchor is the Caltech Athenaeum.

Are Johnson, Kaufmann, and Coate buildings still attributed to all three partners?

Yes. Buildings designed and built during the 1921 to 1924 partnership are attributed to the firm. After the partnership dissolved on December 12, 1924, each partner practiced independently, so post-1924 work is attributed to the individual architect, whether Reginald Davis Johnson, Roland Coate, or Gordon B. Kaufmann.

Styles

Associated Styles.

Works

Notable Works in the SGV.

Sources

Sources and references.

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