The 100 wonders of Long Beach
By Tim Grobaty
Staff columnist
A BOOK ON THE LOOKS OF THE CITY: There are hundreds of ways to look at Long Beach: Launching into town from the north you get a view of an industrialized tangle of trucks, refineries, port structures. Soon enough, you're whipping down a corridor of sparkling glass towers, followed by a string of modern, postmodern, classical buildings: The Ocean Center, the Villa Riviera, the International Tower, the Galaxy all reach for the sky before things settle down along the bluff, bordered on the north by stately summer "cottages"-turned-fulltime, multimillion-dollar residences.
Turn inland, you'll find beautiful buildings some business, some residential (some business converted to residential) along Pine Avenue.
And it goes on and on down every street and boulevard: striking and diverse examples of just about every style in the architectural portfolio.
We could name them all and cite 100 examples, but we'd merely be lifting them straight out of the pages of "Long Beach Architecture: The Unexpected Metropolis," by architectural writers Cara Mullio and Jennifer M. Volland (Hennessey & Ingalls, $39.95).
There's been a shelf full of books written about Long Beach some looking at its history, most just looking at its sights in scrapbook/photo album formats. "Long Beach Architecture" is the first we've seen to so thoroughly and enjoyably present the architecture, and the history of the architecture, in a perfect balance of photographs and analysis.
Mullio, who was born in Long Beach, and Volland, who lives in downtown's Walker Building, have documented 100 projects residences, businesses, churches, stores, condo complexes, even a bridge some still in existence, some destroyed, some unrealized, all showing the breadth of ideas that give the city its look.
Though there are many of the city's consensus-best buildings in the study the Villa Riviera, Security Pacific National Bank, the Breakers Hotel, the Pacific Coast Club, the Adelaide Tichenor House the book is not a collection of Long Beach's Greatest Hits.
"It's a representative sampling of not necessarily the most important buildings, but of those most indicative of certain styles," says Volland.
The writers don't even like all of them though they like most of them: "I like 99 of them," laughs Mullio, though she's too diplomatic to say which one she doesn't have a fondness for.
"She doesn't like the Skinny House," says Volland.
A quick riffle through the book's high-quality, lushly illustrated pages takes you on a tour that includes brisk studies of the Masonic Temple on Locust Avenue, the Hotel Virginia, the Carnegie Public Library in old Lincoln Park, the Harnett House on Sunrise Boulevard, the Kress Building, the Insurance Exchange Building, the Pray/Dawson House on Country Club Drive, the Gaytonia in Belmont Shore, the Newton P. Rummond House (the "Skinny House'), George's Fifties Diner, Java Lanes, the Elks Lodge No. 888 on Spring Street, the THUMS oil islands, Grace United Methodist Church, The Pyramid at Cal State Long Beach and the Aquarium of the Pacific. Some of those, as you're probably aware, are gone now.
"Long Beach has torn down some amazing things," says Mullio.
"And what's sad," adds Volland, "is what they're torn down for. Sometimes they're torn down for nothing."
And other times it's for, oh, a new set of buildings the Pike at Rainbow Harbor, the Camden at Harbor View, CityPlace's stores and apartments. The writers/critics have nothing kind to say about the architectural merits offered by those projects.
Here's the short version, offered by Mullio: "We would've hoped the city would've set its sights higher than that."
The 276-page book was to have been delivered to stores and online sellers by Oct. 1, but labor shortages in the port have delayed its release. You want to see the book now, go out to Bluff Park and look out to sea. It's on one of those container ships waiting in line.
The projected release date now is Nov. 2.
After that? Well, Mullio and Volland certainly have enough knowledge and material for a Volume Two, but they're zeroing in instead on their next project: a monograph on one of Long Beach's most famous and respected architects, Edward Killingsworth.
Killingsworth, who died in July, was a friend and mentor to both writers and his work is amply represented in "Long Beach Architecture: The Unexpected Metropolis."