BILL KRISEL INTERVIEW
Architect Bill Krisel talks about the Alexanders
of Palm Springs and building San Fernando Valley

From the pages of CA-Modern magazine
By Dave Weinstein

In Palm Springs, William Krisel, along with former partner Dan Palmer, is famous for designing modern tract homes with flat, butterfly, or folded-plate roofs, open plans, and decorative concrete block walls. Palmer & Krisel's client, George and Robert Alexander, developed the homes from 1955 to 1965, giving the town much of its modernist legacy.

But in a career that's approaching 60 years, Krisel did much more, including modern tracts in San Diego, subsidized housing in San Francisco's Hunter's Point, apartments, and high-rise condominiums and offices throughout the state.

Today, Bill is still designing houses for Palm Springs. He has licensed updated versions of his mid-'50s Alexander homes -- a larger master bathroom, more open kitchen, double-glazed glass, ample insulation, just as much glass -- to Maxx Livingstone Modern Homes. The firm is building on individual clients' lots and may do a small subdivision as well.

He remains active in the profession, with a second career in what he calls "forensic architecture," helping defend architects in lawsuits. Bill recently spoke for several hours with CA-Modern in the house he designed in 1954 in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles. This is the first part of our interview.

Q: In the beginning of your career, was your work primarily residential?

WK: Actually, the first job I brought into Palmer & Krisel wasn't a residence but a shopping center in the valley. It got built, and we thought we were going to have a big career in shopping centers, but it didn't quite take.

When we first started, we mainly did custom houses, and we only did modern. Neither of us knew anything about traditional architecture at all, didn't like it, didn't want to do it, had no feeling about it. It wasn't part of our life. After doing about 15 custom houses, we began to phase into tract houses.

Q: How did you get involved with the Alexanders and with the desert?

WK: We were one of the first architectural firms to do modern tract housing, and that came about because of a good friend of mine named Bob Alexander. Bob lived up here [Brentwood], and we were in the same social circle. His father was a builder. As we became friends and I talked about architecture, he seemed to like my ideas, and he arranged a meeting with his father.

His father thought I was nuts. His father [George Alexander] told Bob they were very successful building what we call 'dingbats.' This was 1952. Dingbats are stucco boxes that have holes in the wall that are called windows.

Bob persisted with his dad, and his dad thought he'd teach him a lesson. He said, "Okay, I have this piece of land that will take eight or ten houses. Why don't you go and do your thing with Bill? Then you'll know what I'm talking about."

So I did these post-and-beam houses, and before they were finished, they were sold. This was way out in the San Fernando Valley, which at that time was considered very far out. They cost less per square foot than what Bob's father sold as dingbats, and they sold at a higher price, so they made a bigger profit per house. At the end of the project, when all the numbers were in, we met with his father. He was very impressed with what we had done.

He immediately turned over another large parcel of land in San Fernando Valley, which we called Corbin Palms because it was off Corbin Avenue. And that is still a flourishing suburb.

There were developers that came from all over America, saw these houses, how unique they were, how well they sold, how much profit there was in them, how people liked them, how they were written up. And our practice flourished. I think we did 20,000 houses in about a five-year period of time, all over San Fernando Valley, Orange County, La Mirada, Buena Park.

We had developed a system of post-and-beam houses, developed our own windows, our own walls. We found out what cost money in a home, and we figured out how to do it better and cheaper.

Q: What were the Alexanders like?

WK: George Alexander did accounting for people doing big tract houses, and he soon discovered they were making a lot of money. And he soon discovered that they [the builders] didn't know much more about it [building] than they [themselves] did. Yet, if you hired a superintendent and went into partnership with him, you could become a big builder.

So he became a builder. And Bob grew up, didn't want to go to college, and he hung around the building sites and he liked building.

George was a pretty serious guy, and he wasn't well. He was making a lot of money. But the guy who really enjoyed life -- he liked nice cars, and he married a very beautiful girl who came from another builder family (her name was Helene) -- was Bob.

Q: Were you influenced by what Joe Eichler was doing up north?

WK: A. Quincy Jones [one of Eichler's principal architects] was a very good friend of mine, and his office was just down the street from us. We didn't talk about our work, but we knew about each other's work from the magazines. In Southern California we were first [with modern tract houses]. Up north Eichler was much more important. He didn't come down here too much, and the builders who were our clients didn't go up there too much.

Q: Did the tracts take up most of your practice?

WK: Yes, for a good five to six years. I really liked doing it because the people liked our houses and were buying them, and we got written up in all kinds of architectural magazines and newspaper articles. You'd meet people who lived in your houses and they said, "I bought one of your houses and I just love it." So there was a great satisfaction.

Q: How did your work in Palm Springs come about?

WK: Mr. Alexander senior had an illness, and he had to recuperate, so he went to Palm Springs. He felt much better living there, and he said to Bob, "You're getting a lot of competition in Los Angeles. Everybody in town is trying to copy your houses. Why don't you come down here where nobody has done tract houses to speak of?"

Q: Did the Palm Springs houses differ from those in San Fernando?

WK: Our approach in the desert was: 'this was your second home, not your primary home.' It was a totally different lifestyle than in Los Angeles. People who were very conservative were more free and liberal down there. People who dressed in button-down shirts and ties everyday started to wear sports clothes. People who drove hardtops bought convertibles down there.

So we created more informal living spaces, not where you needed household help to maintain it. Informal living. It was very successful.

When we did the houses up here [the Los Angeles area], we were just breaking into tract houses. We couldn't do what we really wanted to do. We had to do what you might call a 'transition' type of modern, so it wouldn't scare people. When we got to Palm Springs, and I was showing Bob what I would like to do, he said, "Let's do it." We felt that down there people would be more open to the more modern, which would be a butterfly roof instead of a gable. We did butterfly roofs and flat roofs, all things we wouldn't do up here.

After Palm Springs, we could do those kinds of houses here. Because you've got to understand -- a tract builder is like a sheep. He follows.

Q: Your firm designed so many thousands of tract homes. Was it hard overseeing all of them?

WK: You can bring me a picture of any of our houses, and I can tell you why everything is the way it is. I had my hands on every single design decision and did most of the drawings -- not the production drawings but the design drawings. We picked the hardware. When we laid out a subdivision, we picked the color of each house to coordinate, so you wouldn't have two houses painted the same across the street. We chose the placement of the palm trees. We did everything. It's what I call being captain of the team. We had total control.

People would ask, 'How could you do all these things?' We did them. My wife will tell you -- I was never home, I worked seven days a week. I didn't get home 'til late at night, and I went to work early. I enjoyed my work.

The attitude that I'm most disappointed about in the profession today, and I've been a fighter on this all my life, is the concept of the architect being the captain of the team. In my day, I had a very tough rule. All the consultants were under my control -- structural, mechanical, electrical, landscaping, interiors, color, security.

Today, a builder will start with a construction manager. He may pick an architect; he'll pick someone who does interiors, someone who does this or that. The construction manager is in control. He has the ear of the client. The architect has lost out. And I blame it on the profession, because they have abdicated that role. They didn't want that responsibility.

Q: Do you have any hobbies?

WK: My work.

Alexander home photo by John Eng; others courtesy William Krisel and Maxx Livingstone Modern Homes

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