Esther McCoy
Esther McCoy (November 18, 1904, in Horatio, Arkansas – December 30, 1989) was an American author and architectural historian who was instrumental in bringing the modern architecture of California to the attention of the world.
Early life and education
Born in
California and later life
In 1932 McCoy was diagnosed with pneumonia and headed West for
Fiction and journalism
In 1929, McCoy began to publish fiction in magazines such as The New Yorker and Harper's Bazaar, as well as in university quarterlies. Her short story "The Cape" was featured in The Best American Short Stories of 1950. In 1924, McCoy met author Theodore Dreiser, and for more than a decade she researched him. She wrote novels, short stories, and screenplays during her years in New York and after moving to Los Angeles. She continued to write fiction into the 1960s, though her first significant article on architecture had been published in 1945. McCoy and a friend, Allen Read, co-authored a series of detective novels under the pseudonym "Allan McRoyd."[1]
McCoy was also a journalist and active member of the Left who wrote for Direction, Upton Sinclair's EPIC [End Poverty in California] News, and the United Progressive News.
Architectural writing
From 1950 until she died in 1989, McCoy was a frequent contributor to
Her first major book, published in 1960, was Five California Architects, the first work to bring to the attention of a wide audience the works of pioneer California modernists Charles and Henry Greene, Irving Gill, Bernard Maybeck, and the Los Angeles-based Austrian emigre Rudolf Schindler. This book was followed by others devoted to the Case Study Houses sponsored by Arts & Architecture, Schindler's fellow emigre Richard Neutra, and architects Craig Ellwood, Calvin C. Straub, among others.
During this era, she also wrote catalogs for gallery and museum exhibitions devoted to modern California architecture and contributed essays to numerous other exhibition catalogs. She lectured at the
In addition to her work in California, McCoy wrote extensively on
McCoy's last work was an essay for the catalog of an exhibition on the
Her extensive collection of papers, slides, and photographs, are held by the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution.
In March 2012,
Books
- 1960: Five California Architects, (New York: Reinhold).
- 1960: Richard Neutra, (New York: G. Braziller).
- 1962: Modern California Houses: Case Study Houses (New York: Reinhold)
- reprinted as Case Study Houses, (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls), 1978.
- 1968: Craig Ellwood (New York: Walker & Company).
- reprinted (Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls), 1998.
- 1979: Vienna to Los Angeles: Two Journeys (Santa Monica, Calif.: Arts & Architecture Press).
- 1984: The Second Generation (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books).
- 2012: Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader (Ed. Susan Morgan. Los Angeles: East of Borneo Books).
References
- ^ Writing Home, Susan Morgan, East of Borneo, May 22, 2012.
- ^ "Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader". East of Borneo. Retrieved May 23, 2012.
Sources
- "Esther McCoy Is Dead; Architecture Critic, 85", The New York Times, December 31, 1989, retrieved 2008-05-25
- "An Esther McCoy Revival Tells Story of L.A.'s Modern Architecture", Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2011, retrieved 2012-05-23
- Esther McCoy Collection at the Archives of American Art
- Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader
- "Esther McCoy, Mother Modern"
- One Woman Crusade Archived 2012-03-24 at the Wayback Machine
- "Reading L.A.: Esther McCoy"
External links
- Esther McCoy papers, 1876-1990, bulk, 1938-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.A finding aid to the fully digitized papers of Esther McCoy.