Gordon Converse Drake

At age 19, living in San Diego Gordon Drake “…was a brooding, sensitive dreamer; he saw cloud patterns reflected on the high, sunlit lakes where he swam and fished; he watched the movement and shimmer of eucalyptus leaves and the play of light and shadow in the hills where he wandered; he felt the deep, challenging rhythm of the ocean on which he sailed."¹

“Had Gordon Drake not died aged 35 while skiing in the Sierras in 1952, he might have become one of the great names of post-war Californian architecture. As it was, he had not yet finished taking his California architectural licensing exams.²

Designed and built while he was still a student under Carl B. Troedsson at USC's School of Architecture and Fine Arts (1939-40), Drake’s ‘House in Coronado’ project was intended for his brother Max, a Navy pilot during World War II, who did not make it back from the War. With this project the budding young architect won the special award for architecture while it was exhibited in the Fisher Gallery on the USC campus. ³

Drake’s designs were “strongly influenced by Harwell Hamilton Harris who had taught him at the University of Southern California and for whom he had worked before and after the war. It was some indication of Drake's demanding character that Harris later wrote, ‘When satisfied there was nothing further to be discovered by continuing a design, he dropped it. Knowing this about him,' he added, `it is surprising that I let him come to work for me”.²

In July 1949, frustrated in his own attempts at architecture, Drake wrote Harris: “It has taken me almost three years to write this letter and perhaps my present low estate was necessary for me to tell you that should I ever arrive at anything of merit in architecture it will be because I was able to work for a time under your guidance.” ²

“It was from Harris that he had learned the benefits of modular construction and the flexibility of gridded plans. It was not just the simplicity of such systems which appealed to Drake but also what they implied: here was a building process which could provide, at minimum cost, a high-quality living environment even an egalitarian architecture. This was the intent of his first house, built for himself in Beverly Glen, Los Angeles, and the essence of all his later work."²

Gordon Drake is buried at Ft. Rosecrans in Point Loma

1. Douglas Baylis and Joan Parry
2. Neil Jackson
3. John Crosse

San Diego Project

Lt. and Mrs. H. M. ‘Max’ Drake Residence (ca. 1939-1940)
374 Avenue D, Coronado