Robert Winter, The Godfather of LA Architecture Passes

“Robert Winter was in the last of a group who lived and breathed the built world of Los Angeles, the people who experienced the development of midcentury modern architecture before there was a term for it.”

Paddy Calistro, Publisher Angel City Press

Robert Winter, the most renowned Los Angeles architectural historian and the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Occidental College, Los Angeles passed at the age of 94. His writings have shined a light on the region’s architectural treasures and helped define the city’s built environment. Lovingly known throughout the architectural industry as “Bungalow Bob,” he was particularly known for his contributions to the history of the California branch of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Winter was present at the creation of the Craftsman Revival in the early 1970s — a revival that, as he has famously noted, has gone on far longer than the relatively short-lived Craftsman period itself.

He was born in Indianapolis in 1924 and attended Dartmouth University and Johns Hopkins before accepting positions at UCLA and Occidental College, where he taught for more than three decades. Robert Winter was eagerly known for his architectural writing, authoring or co-authoring numerous publications over the years. His most recognized work was his collaboration with David Gebhard, titled An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles, which became a ‘must-own’ reference guide for architects and architectural enthusiasts since the first editions in 1965.

Robert Winter lived in The Batchelder House, which is a historic home built in 1910 and located in Pasadena. It is known as an important center of Pasadena cultural life and was designed and built by Ernest A. Batchelder, a prominent leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement.  The house is a large bungalow style home, with the woodsy design elements of a Swiss chalet.

From the ADG Jobsite

Install in progress at an auto museum in Ohio…

by Gerald Olesker, CEO, ADG