Englishman John B. Parkinson apprenticed for six years as a contractor/builder before coming to North America as a lark when he was 21 in 1883. He built fences in Winnipeg and learned stair-building in Minneapolis. He returned to England but was not encouraged about his prospects on the native island. He sailed back to America and came all the way to the Napa Valley in California where he again took up stair-buildings and picked up the odd architectural job every now and then. In 1889 he set out for Seattle to be a draftsman but could not get hired. Instead he opened his own architectural firm and began winning design competitions and commissions but the work dried up during the Panic of 1893. Faced with no projects, nor prospects for work in Seattle, Parkinson moved to Los Angeles in 1894 and hung out his shingle on Spring Street. In 1905 he teamed with G. Edwin Bergstrom to form what we be the City’s dominant architectural firm until its dissolution ten years later. Having come of age in the Victorian era, Parkinson was still at his drafting board in 1926 to design City Hall with John C. Austin. Albert C. Martin supplied the engineering expertise for the 454-foot tower that is the tallest base-isolated structure in the world. Sand from each of California’s 58 counties was mixed with water from each of its 21 historical missions to form the concrete.
No comments:
Post a Comment