California Colonial: The Spanish and Rancho Revival Styles

The drama and beauty of historic homes in California are studied and displayed here in a deeply researched text and over 350 stunning color and over 50 black and white photographs.

Southern California's Spanish Revival homes and monuments are pictured here, including Hearst Castle at San Simeon, the Adamson House in Malibu, Casa del Herrero in Montecito. You will enjoy Rancho Revival landmarks like the Lummis House on Pasadena's arroyo, and Will Rogers' ranch near Pacific Palisades.

These are all different portrayals of the California Colonial, its romantic past and its manner of settling into California's climate and landscape. Vernacular and religious structures built between 1769 and 1848, during the Spanish Mission and Mexican Rancho eras, gave California its unique character; a look that was subsequently fictionalized in the revival architecture produced since those colonial days.

Particularly influential on residential work, the colonial styles have indulged in the rich associations with Spain's culture-employing styles and ornament from the country's provincial Andalusian, Plateresco, Churrigueresco, and Desornamentado styles and its ever-present Mudéjar crafts-or burrowed into its rustic pioneer roots and depicted as individual visions of earthy rancho haciendas.

Elizabeth McMillian is a writer and an art and architecture historian. She is a former landmarks commissioner in Santa Monica, and former president of the Southern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Southern California, was the recipient of a J.P. Getty Memorial Fellowship, and was architectural editor of Architectural Digest from 1982 to 1992.