[timeline_event category=”News at the Time” title=”Angel City Second in Number of Buildings” layout=”true” images=”2574″]Los Angeles Examiner, March 11, 1906

“It certainly is a remarkable fact that the average building in Los Angeles costs $1,000 less than in the city having the next lowest average (Brooklyn). This is not because there is a lack of fine buildings in this city, but it is due solely to the fact that this is a city in which each family has its own cottage out in the open. A building in most other cities means a tenement in which many families are herded together, but in Los Angeles it means the addition of another home for a single family on a 50 foot lot, with plenty of sunshine and fresh air.”

In 1906 the Los Angeles city “boosters” tout the advantages of Southern California living in this newspaper article. This photograph from the Library of Congress shows an example of a Brooklyn tenement the article describes.[/timeline_event]

[timeline_event category=”American Architecture” title=”Unity Church, Oak Park” layout=”true” images=”1202,1203,1099,1100″]The Unity Church is built for the Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Oak Park, Illinois. Designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the temple form, his intent is to create a space primarily for the worship and service of God but with the flexiblity to serve man.

This church, Wright’s earliest experiment in the use of reinforced concrete and steel, is considered the first large scale example using these materials in the United States. Because of the church’s limited financial resources, the architect pursuades his clients of the economy and appropriateness of the reinforced concrete and steel for their project. To counteract the material’s “dead surfaces” Wright washes the exterior exposing the pebble aggregate for a tactile affect and then paints the exterior. Wright continues to be interested in concrete as an economical building medium for residential and commercial buildings.[/timeline_event]