1928 – Paul Revere Williams Project

[timeline_event category=”Paul Revere Williams” title=”Hollywood YMCA” layout=”true” images=”1456″]

Williams’ firm is hired in 1927 to expand and improve the Hollywood YMCA. Williams’ building opens in 1928. Similar to the 28th Street YMCA, this building is considered Spanish Colonial Revival with ceramic and terra-cotta interior decorative details. Unlike the 28th Street Y, there is only one main entrance. Williams’ reconsiders the users circulation within the building allowing the managers more flexibility and encouraging members to participate in different activities.

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[timeline_event category=”News at the Time” title=”New Structure Scheduled for Santa Monica” layout=”true” images=”2639″]Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1928

“Bids are being taken by Architect Paul R. Williams for the construction for L. H. Turnbull of a Class A. two-story and part basement store and office building on Wilshire Boulevard between Third and Fourth streets, Santa Monica. It is announced.”[/timeline_event]

[timeline_event category=”American Architecture” title=”Chrysler Building, New York” layout=”true” images=”2640″]Walter P. Chrysler, wealthy automobile magnate, hires architect William Van Alen to design an office building in New York City tall enough to symbolize the height of his financial success. Van Alen, known for his flamboyant designs, meets the challenge with plans for a 77-story, Art Deco-style building. The building is the first in the world to exceed 1000 feet. To insure the claim to the title of tallest structure, the architect secretly assembles a 27-ton steel tip to be hoisted and unveiled at the last minute. Chrysler and Van Alen’s victory is short lived when the taller Empire State Building is completed in 1931.[/timeline_event]

[timeline_event category=”American Architecture” title=”First Electric Refrigerator” layout=”true” images=”2641″]One of the first electric refrigerators rolls off the assembly line on October 15, 1928.

In 1945 Paul R. Williams wrote in Small Homes of Tomorrow that refrigerators of the future will have many new innovations including an “automatic ice cube ejector.”[/timeline_event]