Internet:
Born in Redlands CA, Harris grew up in the Imperial Valley area and later attended San Bernardino High School. In 1923, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Otis Art Institute and in 1925, he began to study drawing and painting with Stanton Macdonald-Wright at the Art Students League. He enrolled at the Frank Wiggins Trade School and found work in the studio of Richard Neutra. His ambition to be a sculptor, however, was changed after visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House. It was an epiphany for him to study architecture instead of pure art.
A student at Otis told Harris about Richard Neutra's Jardinette Apartments then under construction in Hollywood. Noting the architect's address on the project sign, Harris went Schindler's Kings Road House where he received another indoctrination in modern architecture and met both Schindler and Neutra.
Neutra, needing help at the time, convinced the impressionable Harris that he would learn much more by going to work for him and taking night classes than he ever would in college. He canceled his plans for Berkeley and immediately started working in the Schindler House drafting room on completing the finishing touches on the working drawings of the Lovell Health House.
While working for Neutra alongside Gregory Ain until 1933, Harris learned the importance of publishing one's work in furthering one's career from master publicist Richard Neutra. Harris also saw how Neutra's ability to get his built and unbuilt projects globally published established a foundation from which to build his practice.
His first commissions were for small homes based on the modular modernist principles he had learned from his mentors, Neutra and Schindler. His first significant built project, the Pauline Lowe House (1934) in Altadena, was first published in the October, 1934 issue of House Beautiful, one month after Neutra's first appearance in the same magazine with his Sten-Frenke House.
Harris's personal residence, the award-winning Fellowship Park House completed in 1935, won the 1936 House Beautiful Small House Competition, First Prize in the 1937 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Institute Competition (outdoing two houses by Neutra), and received an Honor Award from the Southern California Chapter of the AIA firmly establishing his reputation in California.
The January, 1940 number, an extremely important issue in editor-publisher Jere Johnson's legacy, featured Harris's Kershner House living room lighting and also had the distinction of being Julius Shulman's first cover photo.
Julius Shulman is one of my favorite architectural photographers.
Harris received numerous awards, including the Richard Neutra Medal for Professional Excellence (1982). Harris was made a fellow in the American Institute of Architects in 1965 and received an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University in 1985.
Wikipedia:
In his residential work of the 1930s and 1940s, primarily in California, Harris created a tension and a continuum between exterior and interior with continuous rooflines.
Great Buildings:
Using mainly wood, Harris exhibited a sensitivity to site and materials that carried on the American Arts & Crafts movement. He adapted from the vernacular of California and from modular practices of Neutra to create his own personal Southern California style.
In his houses of the 1930s and 1940s Harris expressed his roofing on the interior to create a tension between exterior and interior. Without ignoring exterior forms, he created well-though out, sinuous interior spaces. He created Wrightean floor plans that generally used variations of the cruciform plan.
Edited to add: an excerpt from Lisa Germany's book "Harwell Hamilton Harris"(2000):
Mr. and Mrs. Lee Blair were artist for the Walt Disney Studios who had been interested in a house by Harwell Harris. This lot on Fredonia Drive was extremely steep and Harris designed the tiny, one bedroom house with three stories sheathed in horizontal redwood siding. Each of the three blocks of the house rose another step up the hill. At its rear, each floor rested on the natural level of the ground and at its front it rested on the rear edge of the block below it. Thus, the second story used the roof of the first story for a roof terrace, and the third story used the roof of the second story for its roof terrace.
The Blair house followed all the rules of Harris' nine-point plan. The same finishes--grass matting, plywood walls and Celotex ceilings--were used thoughout, and each room had one wall of glass opening into a garden or terrace. This allowed not only for a more generous display of the floor but also showed the Alvar Aalto chairs and Harris-designed couch and dressing table to their full advantage.
My visit to the home of Bill Taylor:
Bill Taylor has been a dear friend of mine and was graceous enough to allow me the privlage of photographying his home designed by Harwell Hamilton Harris. Harwell Hamilton Harris built this home in 1939 for Disney artists Lee and Mary Blair. Bill built a vanicullar to bring packages up the steep hillside. I love the stone walkway to the home does a s curve up the slope. The view on all three levels is stunning. I love all of the use of wood and glass throught out the home. It truly was like living in a tree house. It was through Bill that I heard about Harwell Hamilton Harris.
Photo Gallery of The Blair House
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