Page 69 - 2017 Travel Guide to California

RAFAEL RAMIREZ LEE/SHUTTERSTOCK; MARIUSZ S. JURGIELEWICZ/SHUTTERSTOCK. OPPOSITE: MTAIRA/SHUTTERSTOCK; NAEBLYS/SHUTTERSTOCK
WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL in
Los Angeles, right; Hakone Gardens, a
traditional Japanese garden in Saratoga,
below; Victorian houses on Steiner
Street across from Alamo Square,
opposite bottom.
Arts & Crafts to Computer Contemporary
American Arts and Crafts became closely
associated with California at the turn of the
20th century. The use of natural materials
such as warm, burnished wood panels and
beams, glass and stone reflected Califor-
nians’ deep feeling for nature. Such
buildings, exemplified by the 1908 Gamble
House in Pasadena, seemed to grow organ-
ically out of the earth. The cedar brown
shingle wooden homes of Berkeley, fea-
tured on Berkeley Architecture Heritage
Association walking tours, are pleasing
examples (berkeleyheritage.com).
The streamlined power of early 20th cen-
tury technology found mesmerizing form in
the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s.
Perhaps the noblest example of functional
Art Deco in North America is the 1937
Golden Gate Bridge. With its taut suspen-
sion cables, thrusting towers and trademark
International Orange color, the Golden Gate
Bridge dramatizes the energy, ambition and
power of Art Deco (goldengatebridge.org).
The next breakthrough for architecture
came around the turn of the new millen-
nium with what could be called Computer
Contemporary style. Here, too, the Golden
State shines.
Frank Gehry’s brilliantly realized 2003
Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles,
with its swooping roofs and shining
metallic skin, is a fantasia that couldn’t
have been realized without sophisticated
computers or built without modern alloys
(laphil.com). The rippled gray-white surface
and horizontal windows in the 2016 tower
of the greatly expanded San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art are of a piece with
the contemporary, cutting-edge artwork
inside (sfmoma.org).
Gardens North & South
Major formal public gardens blossomed in
California in the early 20th century.
The splendor of Hakone Gardens, opened
in Saratoga in 1915, showed the way. Hailed
as the oldest Japanese and Asian estate
gardens in the Americas and spreading over
18 hilly acres, serene Hakone Gardens is
known for koi ponds, waterfalls and
strolling and meditative walks (hakone.com).
In 1925, Casa del Herrero (House of the
Blacksmith) opened in a decorative Spanish
Colonial Revival mansion, a style still
hugely popular in host city Santa Barbara.
The estate is celebrated for its Moorish
garden with its water fountain and hedged
outdoors “rooms” (casadelherrero.com).
Both Los Angeles and San Francisco host
distinguished public botanical gardens.
San Francisco debuted the Strybing
Arboretum in 1940 on 55 acres in Golden
Gate Park. Now called San Francisco Botan-
ical Garden, it is renowned for its
rhododendron dell, magnolia collection,
redwood grove and native California plants
(sfbotanicalgarden.org). The Los Angeles
County Arboretum and Botanic Garden was
opened in 1956 in aptly named Arcadia,
with a lovely waterfall, Queen Anne cottage
and garden of perennials (arboretum.org).
The Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden,
opened in 1961, shows off an inspired pro-
fusion of blooms on winding Highway 1 at
Fort Bragg. More major public gardens fol-
lowed (gardenbythesea.org).
Among them: 654-acre Filoli, nestled in
the hills of Woodside south of San Fran-
cisco. Debuting in 1975, Filoli is known for
quiet paths and ponds, a charming rose
garden, 250-year-old live oak trees and 16th
-
century-style English Renaissance Garden
(filoli.org). In 1993, the former estate of
Polish opera singer Ganna Walska pre-
miered near Santa Barbara as Lotusland,
featuring fruit orchards, a succulent garden
and a butterfly garden (lotusland.org).
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