ARCHITECT | DESIGN | BUILD 12.19.2014 109
SEAVIEW
Imagine it's 1960 and you're looking for a modest home in a seaside community. Someone hands you a sales brochure
with an aqua cover and an alluring headline: "New homes in fashionable, smog-free, scenic SeaView Palos Verdes…with
ocean views supreme." Intrigued, you make the drive to Palos Verdes and discover a brand-new neighborhood of tract
houses—190 in all—on 10,000-square-foot lots.
You explore eight different floor plans with names as exotic as The Copacabana, The Monte Carlo, The Bermuda. At 1,700
to 2,000 square feet, each home has anywhere from three to four bedrooms, some with ocean views and a glimpse of
Catalina Island. Selling for anywhere between $34,000 and $43,700, you buy a new single-story home with Tiki styling.
In just six months, total sales in the new neighborhood amount to $500,000.
The SeaView subdivision in Palos Verdes is just 24 miles north of one of architect Paul Revere Williams' most iconic public
buildings, the Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport. The futuristic, spider-like building was completed
about the same time as the housing tract. Well before drawing the plans for SeaView, Williams had already made
his mark in the South Bay with the Williamsburg Lane in Rolling Hills. Completed in the 1930s, the tract is comprised of
14 early-American style homes originally priced between $8,000 and $9,000.
[ P A U L R E V E R E W I L L I A M S ]
PHOTO
©
DAVID
HORAN,
2010,
COURTESY
THE
PAUL
REVERE
WILLIAMS
PROJECT,
ART
MUSEUM,
UNIVERSITY
OF
MEMPHIS.
SEAVIEW, RANCHO PALOS VERDES
SEAVIEW EXTERIORS / 1 WILLIAMSBURG LANE / WILLIAM FORD HACIENDA
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL JONASON
