A new documentary gives the Roosevelt Historic District architect the big build-up
By Theo Douglas

You could write the story of famed architect Paul Revere Williams in Long Beach with a wrecking ball. And in 1998, that’s pretty much what happened, when demolition crews flattened the Roosevelt Historic District of the Naval Base, one of his signature projects—and the former gateway to Long-Beach for thousands of Seventh Fleet sailors.

Except, ironically, scuttling the base is what indirectly brings us Paul Revere Williams: a Legend in Architecture, a film by documentarian Dave Kelly (director of Advanced Media Production at Cal State Long Beach), which screens tonight at the university. When the base came down, preservationists sued and got a preservation grant established in his name. Nine years later, $39,000 from the Long Beach Navy Memorial Heritage Association helped fund Kelly’s film. And all it cost us was the Naval Base. How things sometimes turn out around here.

“If there was one facility you could build that would have a lasting effect on the city, that was it,” Kelly says of the base. But there’s lots more Williams left—some of it in Long Beach, much of it in the film.

He designed or helped design the famous space-y Encounter restaurant at Los Angeles International Airport; the former Bank of America in Long Beach that now houses Vault 350; the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles; the United Nations building in Paris; and two houses in Long Beach—both extant—which are great examples of why you should care about Williams.

Born in 1894, he was an old guy by the time he worked on these homes: one in Virginia Country Club off San Antonio Drive and Long Beach Boulevard; the other in Park Estates, which radiates out from either side of Anaheim Road between Pacific Coast Highway and Bellflower Boulevard. They’re homes for wealthy people—especially in today’s market—but the warmth of their interiors makes them uniquely his. It’s a mark of Williams’s skill, Kelly says, that he was able to adapt the same design touches he used in creating more grandiose homes for Hollywood stars.

“They were functional and comfortable. That’s not always easy to do,” Kelly observes. “There was a sense of warmth to his structures that people felt comfortable with.”

More comfortable, perhaps, than they realize. The first house Williams did in Park Estates—one later owned by former Press-Telegram publisher Dan Ridder—was built for developer Lloyd Whaley, who went on to develop the rest of Park Estates. In the style already prescribed by Williams.

“It wasn’t necessarily Paul Revere Williams’s design,” Kelly says, “but it certainly was an influence on the rest of the community.”

And, unlike the Naval Base, it’s still with us.

PAUL REVERE WILLIAMS: A LEGEND IN ARCHITECTURE GERALD R. DANIEL RECITAL HALL | CAL STATE LONG BEACH | 1250 BELLFLOWER BLVD | LONG BEACH 90840 | 562.985.4352 | WED 6:30PM | FREE