Architect

H. Roy Kelley

1893–1989

Profile

About H. Roy Kelley.

H. Roy Kelley was a Los Angeles-based residential architect with a documented Pasadena, San Marino, South Pasadena, and Rancho Santa Anita catalog from the mid-1930s through 1950. He took his architecture degree from Cornell University in 1915 and was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) in 1940. He specialized in Early California, Monterey Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, English Revival with Cotswold Cottage features, and one-story California ranch designs. The 2004 City of Pasadena Period Revival Architecture report names him among the architects who established the California ranch as a residential type, alongside Wallace Neff, Palmer Sabin, and Donald MacMurray. His papers are preserved at Cornell University (thirteen scrapbooks of designs, articles, and photographs of his residences from 1913 to 1965) and the University of California, Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collection (6.5 linear feet, including annotated drafts of his memoir 50 Happy Years of Architecture).

H. Roy Kelley designed the residential vocabulary that defined upper-middle-class Pasadena, San Marino, and Rancho Santa Anita through the 1930s and 1940s. Working out of a Los Angeles practice, he produced houses in Monterey Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, English Revival with Cotswold Cottage features, and one-story ranch idioms. The 2004 City of Pasadena Period Revival Architecture report names Kelley as one of the architects who shaped the period revival to ranch transition in Pasadena and the surrounding San Gabriel Valley cities, alongside Wallace Neff, Palmer Sabin, and Donald MacMurray.

His documented San Gabriel Valley residential catalog includes the F.G. Sherrill house in San Marino (1935), the M.D. Schatzman house in San Marino (1936), the A.C. Surber house in Rancho Santa Anita (1937), the A.J. Daugherty house in Rancho Santa Anita (1940), the K.W. Gibbs house in Pasadena, the C.S. Koebig residence in South Pasadena (English Revival with Cotswold Cottage features, later owned by Dr. and Mrs. William Sherman), and the William Taylor store on South Lake Avenue, Pasadena (1950).

For a San Gabriel Valley buyer, a Kelley attribution on a house from the 1930s and 1940s is a strong signal of period-correct design and conservative material specification. Kelley took his architecture degree from Cornell University in 1915, was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) in 1940, and ran a Los Angeles practice that produced mostly residential work for roughly fifty years. He authored a memoir titled “50 Happy Years of Architecture.” His papers, including thirteen scrapbooks of designs, articles, and photographs of his residences, are split between Cornell University’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the University of California, Santa Barbara Architecture and Design Collection (6.5 linear feet at UCSB).

Kelley’s houses tend to read as quietly assured rather than flamboyant. His Monterey Revival work in particular set the working template for what an Early California two-story house looked like in San Marino and Pasadena between the wars: balanced massing, a second-floor balcony running across the front, low-pitched gable or hip roofs in clay tile or wood shake, restrained Spanish-influenced trim, and a planned relationship between the house and the garden.

Early life and training

Harold Roy Kelley was born May 2, 1893, in Matteawan, New York (now part of Beacon, in Dutchess County), to a mother whose maiden name was Carey. He left school at fourteen to work as a runner on Wall Street, gained additional experience in architectural firms during his teens, and entered Cornell University with sufficient skill that he was permitted to skip his freshman courses. He took his architecture degree from Cornell in 1915 at age twenty-two.

After graduation, Kelley worked under the New York designer Paul Chalfin, the artistic director of Vizcaya, the James Deering estate in Miami. He then took further New York-based work before moving to Los Angeles. By 1925 he had established his own independent practice in San Marino, California. His earliest California publication credit appears in Western Architect in 1913, attributed to “A.R. Kelley, Architect” in a typesetter error that propagated through later citations.

The Los Angeles practice and Early California specialty

Kelley’s reputation in his working years was built on what the Architect and Engineer called his “domestic” architecture: residential, regionally specific, executed in a Monterey Revival vocabulary that he helped popularize. He was producing two-story Monterey houses with second-floor balconies running across the front by the mid-1920s, and by 1928 he had designed the Goodrich House in Palos Verdes Estates. Architect and Engineer ran a thirty-seven-page feature on his domestic and other architecture, on pages 24 through 60 of its September 1931 issue.

In the 1930 Better Homes in America national small house competition, Kelley took an Honorable Mention in the one-story class alongside Roland E. Coate and Donald D. McMurray. (Reginald D. Johnson won the gold medal that year for the William R. Dickinson bungalow at Hope Ranch, Santa Barbara.) In 1931 Kelley won the Home Owners Institute of America national “Model American Home” competition, with the prototype built at Sleepy Hollow, New York under the supervising architects Farrar and Watmough. Also in 1931, President Herbert Hoover appointed Kelley to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Home Building. The Better Homes in America and Home Owners Institute competitions were two of the most consequential residential architecture awards of the period, and Kelley’s place in both confirms his stature among California residential architects working between the wars.

Kelley was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) in 1940. In 1947 he served on a Visiting Accreditation team for the National Architectural Accrediting Board. He continued in residential practice through the 1950s and authored articles in the architectural and home press across his career, including “Half-Timber of English Type” (1929), “Co-Operation with Clients” (1930), and “The Evils of Modern Art” (1929). His memoir, “50 Happy Years of Architecture,” covers the span from his first commissions to roughly 1965.

The San Gabriel Valley residential catalog

Kelley’s documented San Gabriel Valley residential work runs from 1932 through 1950, anchored in San Marino and the Rancho Santa Anita area of what is now east Arcadia and Sierra Madre, with additional Pasadena and South Pasadena commissions. The catalog opens with the Clarence P. Day house in San Marino (1932), published in American Architect with the title “Designed in the Manner of the Early Houses of Monterey” and one of his earliest Monterey Revival exemplars in the city. The catalog continues with the F.G. Sherrill house in San Marino (1935), the M.D. Schatzman house in San Marino (1936), the A.C. Surber house at Rancho Santa Anita (1937), the A.J. Daugherty house at Rancho Santa Anita (1940), the K.W. Gibbs house in Pasadena, and the C.S. Koebig residence in South Pasadena (English Revival with Cotswold Cottage features, on the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation home tour roster).

For a buyer evaluating a San Marino or Pasadena house from this period, a Kelley attribution should be checked through the city building department, the Pasadena Cultural Heritage Commission survey records, and, where the family papers survive, the UCSB collection. The houses share recognizable characteristics. The massing is balanced and informal. The materials are conservative: stucco over wood lath, real clay tile or wood-shake roofing, oak or fir interior trim, and casement window assemblies in the period-correct profile. The Monterey examples carry the diagnostic second-floor balcony running across the front façade, sometimes wrapping a corner, with simple turned or square posts and a low rail.

His commercial San Gabriel Valley work is thinner but includes the William Taylor store on South Lake Avenue, Pasadena (1950).

Style vocabulary

Kelley worked in three primary residential vocabularies: Monterey Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, and English Revival (often with Cotswold Cottage features). He also designed one-story California ranch houses, and the 2004 Pasadena Period Revival report places his ranch work alongside Wallace Neff, Palmer Sabin, and Donald MacMurray as the architects who established the California ranch as a residential type before it spread nationally.

In Monterey Revival, Kelley’s working vocabulary is faithful to the type: two stories, a second-floor balcony running across the front with simple posts and a low rail, clay tile or wood-shake roof at a low pitch, restrained Spanish-influenced trim, and the diagnostic asymmetrical massing that distinguishes Monterey from Spanish Colonial Revival.

In Spanish Colonial Revival, he worked in the same vocabulary as Reginald D. Johnson, Roland Coate, and Wallace Neff: stucco walls, clay tile roof, recessed entries with tile surrounds, deep window reveals, low arched openings, and well-detailed wrought iron.

His English Revival work, including the South Pasadena residence with Cotswold Cottage features, uses the period-correct vocabulary: undulating roof line, half-timbering applied as structure rather than decoration, leaded glass casements, low-eaved gables, and stone or brick trim around the entry.

For more on the styles Kelley practiced, see Monterey Colonial, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Tudor Revival.

Legacy and archive

Kelley’s working papers are preserved across two institutional archives. The H. Roy Kelley papers at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, include thirteen scrapbooks of designs, articles, and photographs of his residences from 1913 to 1965, plus his student architectural drawings from his Cornell years under Professor Phelps. The H. Roy Kelley papers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Architecture and Design Collection span 6.5 linear feet and include annotated drafts of his memoir “50 Happy Years of Architecture,” correspondence, interior and exterior black-and-white photographs and negatives of his residential and commercial designs, commemorative medals, and architectural drawings.

He is catalogued in the Pacific Coast Architecture Database as person ID 311 and his practice as firm ID 359. He died in Los Angeles County on April 15, 1989, at age ninety-five.

Styles

Associated Styles.

Works

Notable Works in the SGV.

Sources

Sources and references.

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