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This Spanish Revival home
on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach shows several characteristic of
this architectural style:
- White exterior walls
- Smooth finished stucco
- Arched Roman windows
- Ornately carved doors
- Flat and/or low-pitched roof
- Red roof tiles
- Iron work trim on windows and doors
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Spanish Revival is a purely American
architectural style drawing on Spanish, Moorish, Mission and Mexican
architectural influences -- and mixing these diverse elements in
such a way that the whole is very pleasing. George
Smith of Santa Barbara was one of the originators of this
architecture which was popular in the American Southwest in the 1920s
and 1930s.
Two Long Beach neighborhoods are the home to
hundreds of Spanish Revival houses: Belmont Shore
and California Heights. In Cal Heights you will find single-story, single family
homes on small lots built in the 1920s.
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This one-story Spanish
Revival home is a streamlined classic version of the style
with its arched front window, red tile roof and white exterior.
The ornamentation is minimal. The Mission influence is revealed in
the dark wood beams above the square front windows.
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Belmont Shore and, to an extent, Belmont
Heights, presents another view of Spanish Revival. In these two
neighborhoods there are two-story single family homes as well as
apartment buildings in that style.
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Mustard gold paint and
sage green awnings on the exterior of this two-story Spanish
Revival home in Belmont Heights are strictly contemporary color
choices. Originally the home was painted white.
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The Monterey Colonial
influence shows on this home with the cantilevered brown wood
balcony on the second story of this Belmont Shore home.
The walls at the edge of the property are rustic, in
keeping with the Colonial influence.
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The interiors of many Spanish Revival homes are
all white with cove or tray ceilings; others had wood beam ceilings,
sometimes elaborately painted. The red tiles on the roofs may
originally been clay, but now are often a more durable concrete, stained
red.
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Tiles were used on
stairs, floors, fireplace surrounds, walls -- even on tables --
in Spanish Revival homes. Many tiles came from local
potteries, including the Malibu
Pottery.
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