Building California
Technology and the Landscape
May 6 - August 15, 1998

The history of California building is one of physical materials -- wood, brick, iron, steel, and concrete and changing technology. It is also a history of the relationship between building technologies and the natural and cultural landscapes.

This relationship implies an understanding of the landscape as a visible record of human beings living on the land, and leads to an exploration not only of the physical appearance of places, but also the social and environmental influences that shape technologies. Building California: Technology and the Landscape addresses the range of connections between building technologies and the world around them.

Tracing the development of the built landscape in northern California from pre-colonial times through World War II reveals an intricate and layered view of the structures we see around us. Photographs, drawings, documents, and artifacts illustrate how shifts in population have brought new technologies and materials into use, how natural resources and disasters have affected the growth of California cities and towns, and how roads, electrical lines, and aqueducts linked urban and rural landscapes. This evolution of the use of structures and materials serves as a framework for understanding individual buildings, and as a foundation for the continuing process of building California.

NATIVE CALIFORNIA

The materials and styles of Native Californian structures varied according to place and season, reflecting the diverse natural landscapes and climates within the region. Buildings also varied according to precipitation, soil, vegetation, and the proximity of usable tools. Although some communities, such as the Yurok, built permanent villages, most native peoples built settlements to last only from season to season, or for a few years. Constructed of local materials, the built landscape echoed the colors and textures of the natural landscape. Once abandoned, most village sites quickly reverted to their original condition. None of the structures built during the pre-colonial period exist today.

COLONIALISM: IMPORTED TECHNOLOGIES

The colonial period in California saw enormous changes to the region's culture and architecture. When the Spanish arrived in northern California in the 1770s, they brought building traditions and technologies from Europe and Mexico. Colonial structures were larger and more complex than those of Native Californians. They required both the craftsmanship of skilled artisans and physical labor provided by Spanish and Native workers, and animals.

Like Native Californians, colonial settlers relied primarily on local materials. The most prevalent type of construction used adobe bricks, made from clay and straw, and a masonry technology common in Spain and Mexico. Walls were constructed of adobes held together with mud mortar. Buildings had flat or pitched roofs, made of clay tile or thatching, and were often covered with a white limestone coating. More substantial buildings were constructed of stone from local quarries.

THE GOLD RUSH

The Gold Rush brought tens of thousands of people to a place without enough buildings to accommodate them, and without an industrial structure sufficient to produce building materials from the region's natural resources. Gold Rush builders applied technologies from other places and were forced to import building materials produced nationally and internationally.

Initially, settlers resorted to temporary or makeshift solutions such as tents or lean-tos, and shanties. Abandoned ships, still afloat or grounded on the tidal flats, often provided shelter or raw materials, and even served as first stories for larger buildings. Prefabricated buildings, made of wood or metal, were shipped from manufacturers around the world.

INSTANT SETTLEMENTS

Mining camps, port cities, agricultural towns, and commercial centers appeared throughout California following the Gold Rush. These instant settlements required readily available building materials and labor to build structures quickly. A building industry sprang up rapidly to supply the booming economy and population. Because wood was plentiful in the vast virgin forests, lumber was the first building material to be produced industrially in northern California.

Permanent and portable sawmills were established throughout the region to prepare the lumber needed to facilitate efficient construction. Two related landscapes emerged as a result of the newly established lumber industry. Within California forests, hillsides once dense with trees stood bare. As trees disappeared from the natural environment, cites and towns constructed primarily of wood appeared throughout the state.

URBAN FIRES

During the 1850s, almost every Gold Rush city was badly damaged by fire. These instant settlements were textbook cases of hazardous conditions. Rows of wooden buildings linked by wooden sidewalks, poorly constructed fireplaces and chimneys, oil and candle lighting, and the dangerous storage of gun powder and lighting oil next door to saloons and residences all contributed to the problem.

Response to fire danger resulted in the reconstruction of central business areas in fire-resistant materials. Following devastating fires, towns originally established without any legal codes for construction began enacting laws to require more fire-resistant buildings, and the relocation of hazardous materials away from congested areas. Safety requirements for new buildings included iron shutters over window and door openings, and brick walls with parapets.

NINETEENTH CENTURY EARTHQUAKES

California's built landscape was shaped in part by natural events. Seasonal flooding, for example, led to the construction of buildings over raised basements along the Sacramento Delta. In other places, the brick districts of new cities, which were safer from fire than the wooden towns that preceded them, were more vulnerable to earthquakes.

Following the earthquakes of 1865 and 1868, builders, engineers, architects, and businessmen became conscious of the dangers of earthquakes and responded with a proliferation of new construction techniques. Because masonry buildings tended to break into pieces during earthquakes, techniques were developed to bind the individual bricks and stones into a single unit. These included numerous inventions to reinforce masonry walls with grids of vertical bars and horizontal bands called bond iron. Fear of earthquakes contributed to height restrictions in building and resulted in the persistent use of wood for residences.

INDUSTRIAL AND MILITARY ENGINEERING

During the late-nineteenth century, with the emergence of the modern corporation, the scale of enterprises such as shipping, storage, manufacturing, and transportation increased tremendously. The needs of private-sector industry coincided with government interests in expanding military and economic capacity. Both needed large, secure buildings as well as increased control over the environmental elements that affected commerce, travel, and trade.

Engineers trained in public, private, and military universities around the country developed solutions for large-scale industrial projects required by both industry and the government. This was also a period of experimentation in which inventors and business entrepreneurs played an important role in developing new materials and technologies.

BUSINESS EXPANSION:
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOWNTOWN

By the 1870s, business offices began to be concentrated in a new kind of urban community or neighborhood with a new name ?-- downtown. The stacking of office floors in a single building, and the clustering of office buildings in a specialized district reflected the desire of businesses to be located near similar businesses and a variety of services.

The first office buildings were three to six story structures constructed out of fire-resistant materials, generally brick walls, cast-iron or heavy timber columns, and brick or decorative cast-iron fronts. In 1888, construction began on San Francisco's first skyscraper, the Chronicle Building. Like other tall office buildings, it required a structural skeleton of iron and steel, as well as electricity and modern mechanical and communication systems.

The expansion of cities beginning in the late nineteenth century resulted in urban landscapes characterized by a proliferation of new building types and by the concentration of larger, taller buildings that define the cities of today.

TECHNOLOGY, INFRASTRUCTURE
AND THE LANDSCAPE

The economic development of mining, hydraulic engineering, hydroelectric power, and transportation during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries transformed the California landscape. These technologies provided strong ties between urban and rural areas, forging a permanent link between industrial development and population growth in cities, and the natural resources that supported them. The physical features of this infrastructure -- bridges, power lines, dams, aqueducts, and roads -- have become conspicuous features of the modern landscape.

The evolution of materials and technology used to build the infrastructures paralleled those used to construct buildings. Designs for structures required for deep-quartz mining may have provided engineers with ideas for tall steel-frame buildings. The technology of wooden flumes used in hydraulic mining was applied to lumbering and irrigation as well as the design and construction of aqueducts, land reclamation projects, and hydroelectric power.

By the 1920s, the natural rural landscape had become domesticated. The flat alluvial lands of the Central Valley, inland valleys, and around the San Francisco Bay were overlaid with the grid of the federal land survey, crisscrossed by local roads and electric distribution lines, and bordered by irrigation canals and reclamation systems. Today, most of rural California is an altered landscape of logged forests, grazed grasslands, irrigated farmlands, and drained wetlands reclaimed for agriculture and development.

1906 DISASTER AND RECONSTRUCTION

The cities and suburbs of the Bay Area underwent striking changes both in building methods and materials following the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. The combination of these disasters revived old fears and resulted in renewed efforts to build structures that would resist future seismic events. Although fire-resistant construction was well understood, knowledge of earthquake-resistant construction was still in its infancy. This complicated the adoption of new building codes. As late as 1927, the San Francisco building code provided standards for bracing tall buildings against wind, but did not require additional measures for earthquakes.

Despite limitations, rebuilding from the 1906 disaster brought about construction practices that greatly improved the safety of buildings. New regulations changed the face of the urban landscape. Buildings formerly clad in stone were now faced in terra cotta and cast concrete. Streets once dominated by brick walls now included concrete buildings covered with stucco, and there were new taller steel-frame buildings changing the skyline.

BETWEEN THE WARS

Throughout the early-twentieth century, industrial research produced new building and decorative materials. While in the past, developments in architecture and building practice had often been initiated and adopted locally, technological changes and standards of this era became more national in scope. As building technologies were quickly and uniformly adopted, there was an increasing similarity in the use of structures and materials, and in the appearances of buildings throughout California and the United States.

By the time of the construction boom of the 1920s, most significant projects were built by large construction companies relying on organized labor. Complex buildings with sophisticated structural designs and electrical and mechanical systems required workers with specialized skills and equipment. Engineers refined the invisible structural features of buildings such as foundations, reinforcing bars (rebar), steel frames, and fire-resistant materials. Architects experimented with a variety of materials and technology for decoration including terra cotta, artificial stone, and sheet metal.

WORLD WAR II

The impact of World War II on the use of structures and materials in California building was comparable in scope to the establishment of the missions, the Gold Rush, urban fires, and the earthquakes of 1868 and 1906. Old technologies were discarded and new ones adopted to address military needs, wartime housing requirements, and shortages of building materials diverted to the defense industry. In response to the shortage of building materials, new materials were developed and existing materials such as plywood, concrete block, and aluminum were used more widely. There was also increased experimentation with pre-fabricated buildings and building parts.

The construction that took place between 1942 and 1944 made a lasting impact on the environment. Dozens of large new military bases, major industrial complexes, and vast housing developments dwarfed existing elements of the landscape and set the stage for the rapid construction of automobile suburbs in the 1950s.

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