San Fernando Valley

View south from the Simi Hills.

The Valley in Oil

For sale on eBay:
20 X 24 inches Oil on canvas by Sunday Painter, William O. Lambert. Think Conrad Buff or Dale Nichols without the rigor...Thiebaud minus genius...Hopper without pathos or painterly expertise...think San Fernando Valley where, in the immortal words of Neal Diamond.."Sun shines most the time...and the feelin' is lay back...".

Still...there's something here. It's got soul and honest intent. A certain guileless modernity, if such a thing existed and if you consider the time and place....

1942...THE VALLEY was not, then, what it is today and there's something to be said for an honest visual document of that time. Think of it: With the world at War, not a shameful carte blanche red herring or a grab for oil money but a war for the soul of the world, a man sets up his easel overlooking his piece of God's Green Earth in California and commits it to memory for us to see...after 65 years. And if someone buys it on Ebay and enjoys it and protects it, it will reach a hundred years and maybe two and come to make sense in a way that we can't possibly comprehend in a 2007 that will someday be an impossibly distant past.

It's an honest picture. I'll start it at 1 honest dollar. William O. Lambert...Sunday painter...painter on and of Sundays in 1942.

Live happily ever after in Storybook Village

San Fernando Valley circa 1956: Once upon a time there was a builder with a dream. He wanted to give folks precisely the home they'd always hoped to own. So he had famous architects, Palmer & Krisel, A.I.A. combine everything that is wonderful and new in modern home design . . . added every most wanted feature . . . and priced these homes so that every Prince Charming could afford one for his Princess Fair! He called these homes "Storybook Village" because here, indeed, was a place where dreams come true!

Old Topanga Road

Topanga is the name given to the area by the Tongva tribe, and may mean "a place above." It was the western border of their territory, abutting the Chumash tribe that occupied the coast from Malibu northwards. Bedrock mortars can be found carved into rock outcroppings in many locations.

In the 1920's, Topanga Canyon became a weekend getaway for Hollywood stars with several cottages built for that purpose. More.

Fabulous San Fernando Valley

. . . sounds better than The Above Average San Fernando Valley.

Topiaria

Topiary poodle in North Hills, CA

And, beyond . . .

Early agriculture in the San Fernando Valley

Late 19th and early 20th Century photos from the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection.

Santa Susanna Mountains

To the south of the San Fernando Valley are the Santa Monica Mountains. To the north of the Valley are the Santa Susannas. Episodes of the TV series Bonanza and Zorro were once filmed here, along with many others. The first discovery of oil in California was on the north side of these mountains. A well there became famous as the longest-producing well in the world, having been capped in September, 1990 after 114 years.

It's orange pickin' time in the Valley

At one point when we were buying our house, someone mentioned that the two orange trees on our side yard are from the original San Fernando Valley groves. It's unclear if that's true, but, these are old trees and, in fact, they're dying as are many older and weakened orange trees across the Valley. Symptoms of the disease appear to be thinning leaf cover and what looks like burnt stems and branches. A citrus expert at Cal State Northridge, told us that many of these 50-year-old orange trees are being killed off by a fungus that clogs the xylem starting from its roots and works its way upward. There appears to be no cure.

However long the trees have, we're enjoying the delicious fruit.

Valley Counts

The more than 1.74 million people who live in the San Fernando Valley exceed the populations of all but the top-four cities in the United States: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. More from the Census.

In defense of The Valley

Valley state of mind
Michele Miles Gardiner, Daily News

THE San Fernando Valley is constantly portrayed in the media — and by those who dwell on the other side of the hill — as nothing more than a sun-baked wasteland of mini mall-strewn streets under a tangle of wires and smog. The place where only illiterate meth addicts, porn stars and frosted-haired simpletons would choose to live, where cuisine no more exotic than canned ravioli can be found, and where the suburban sprawl is consuming us Valley dwellers under its mass, oozing over us until we suffocate beneath it, rendering our brains (what little brain matter we have) useless. Continued . . .

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry

Lake Balboa in the San Fernando Valley

Early Daze

"Everywhere in this broad, flat valley are farms, orchards, gardens and typical California homes set amid gardens...or clinging to the hillsides or overlooking several golf courses. The air is deep with the aroma of growing things and of budding flowers, and in the early fall the scent of ripened fruits and grains permeates the valley."

The Romantic Southland of California, 1928 driving guide

'50s Tract Home Architect Recalls a Simpler Style

After World War II, the San Fernando Valley became a mecca for GIs and their families, looking for a place to settle and live the American dream.

For many in pursuit of affordable housing -- tract homes provided the answer.

During the 1950s, the architectural firm of Palmer and Krisel designed and built about 4,000 homes in the Valley. As purveyors of ``modernism for the masses,'' the duo was known for creating high-quality yet affordable work. Their homes, originally priced below $25,000, now command $600,000 and up.

``They brought the quality of good architecture to the mass housing industry,'' says Alan Hess, author of ``The Ranch House,'' and architecture critic for the San Jose Mercury News.

``Developers would come to Southern California from other parts of the country and see what they were doing and take those ideas back with them.''

On Sunday, two Palmer and Krisel homes are featured on an L.A. Conservancy tour of modern homes in the Valley.

Bill Krisel, now 81 and living in Brentwood, will be at one of the residences to discuss his work.

Krisel was born in Shanghai, China, and says he was inspired to pursue architecture at age 12 when he read a piece about Frank Lloyd Wright in Life magazine. He received a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1949, after serving in the U.S. Army as a Chinese interpreter during World War II.

In addition to designing tracts in the Valley, he and Dan Palmer worked in Palm Springs, San Diego and throughout the southern U.S. After their partnership dissolved in 1964, each went on to pursue successful independent careers.

Krisel sat down recently with the Daily News to reflect on his career.

Daily News: Who were the tract houses in the San Fernando Valley designed for?

Bill Krisel: It was for what you would call a ``hypothetical family.'' We created different families and that's why we had different size houses. You visualized a mother, father, two kids in the smaller houses, three kids in the medium house and four kids in the bigger house.

DN: You've done both custom design for individuals and tract work. Which did you like better?

BK: I much preferred doing tract work because we could create this hypothetical family as the client, whereas when you have a real client, they want you to measure how many pairs of shoes they have and how many neckties they have and how they fold their socks.

DN: But even though your homes weren't custom-built, they did come with a lot of special features.

BK: Because I did such a large volume of houses, manufacturers of lighting fixtures, kitchen appliances, windows, doors all came to me and said `What would you like to see?' So I would design light fixtures, appliances, carpets, doors, windows, everything. And they would use them in the houses.

DN: You lived in one of your own tract homes in the '50s right after you got married to your wife, Corinne. You had two kids there. How much did that house cost?

BK: We bought it for the regular price, we didn't get any special deal, and it was $14,500.

It was $500 down and the payments were $60 a month. It was a four-bedroom, three-bath house and it was very comfortable. We lived there for about three years.

DN: What set your work apart from others during the same time period?

BK: Our houses were unique in that we had a system. The materials that we used, we used efficiently. For example, if something came in a 4-foot size, we used it in a 4-foot size so there would be no waste.

Traditional, conventional houses paid no attention to those kinds of economies. There was total efficiency. The houses went up very quickly, they didn't get expensive to build, and they made the builders a lot of money.

DN: And the materials were durable.

BK: Well, they've lasted 50 years, so I can't argue with that.

As a matter of fact, at the time I made them I didn't believe they would still be around. I thought the world would change, people would tear them down or other things would be built there. And so I'm very pleased that so many of my houses are still being lived in 50 years later.

DN: Lately it seems like there's a renewal of enthusiasm for these homes.

BK: There's an appreciation of what was midcentury design. Because what tract builders went on to build after 10 years of modern houses are what we call Cinderella houses. These had cutesy little shutters and pot shelves and looked like Disneyland.

And the other sad thing is that houses got so big they had to go two stories and crowd the lots and so forth. I think there's going to be a resurgence to going back to the type of living we had in the '50s where you don't build monster houses.

DN: So midcentury modern was not a fad?

BK: No. It's still there. There are people still loving it. People still call me and say `I wish you would do some new ones.' So it's nice to have all that happiness going on.