Danny Thomas was both client and friend - Williams designed St. Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz were clients. Williams built an elegant bachelor pad for Frank Sinatra when the singer was between marriages. Several of them were celebrities from Hollywood's heyday. Parsons says Williams homes posses grace, design and elegant proportions, which attracted people with money and taste. "They're an absolute pedigree for someone to have in their arsenal." "They're gobbled up in seconds," he says. He says when Williams homes come up for sale, real estate agents scramble to get the listing. That sentiment may explain why Williams' homes don't come on the market very often.īret Parsons is head of the architectural division of John Aaroe Group, a Beverly Hills real estate brokerage handling multimillion-dollar properties. "Every now and then, I think about leaving," Mullin admits. He bought the house - once inhabited by producer Ingwald Preminger, brother of director Otto - and has enjoyed it for 35 years. "The first time I saw it, I didn't think I could afford the house, but if I could afford the staircase, I wanted to take it with me!" Mullin laughs. Retired financial services magnate Peter Mullin remembers how he felt when he saw his 1925 Colonial, the first one Williams built in L.A.'s posh Brentwood neighborhood. One of his hallmarks - a luxuriantly curving staircase - has captivated many a potential owner. His work has come to signify glamorous Southern California to the rest of the country - and to the world. Despite warnings from those who thought he was being impractical ("Your own people can't afford you, and white clients won't hire you," was one such warning), Williams became an architect.Īrchitect Paul Williams (in a photo thought to be from the 1940s or '50s) developed the ability to sketch buildings upside down to accommodate white clients who might not want to sit next to him. And what he wanted was to design homes for families - perhaps because he lost his own so early in his life. A family friend raised him and told him he was so bright, he could do anything he wanted. Born in downtown Los Angeles in 1894, Williams became orphaned before he turned 4 when his parents, Chester and Lila, died of tuberculosis. When Paul Williams began his career, he could find no black architects to be his role models or mentors. They feature many characteristics that were innovative when he used them in the 1920s through the '70s and are considered common practice now - like the patio as an extension of the house, and hidden, retractable screens. Williams: Classic Hollywood Style, focuses on some of the homes of his celebrity clients. Hudson, has been chronicling Williams' life and work for the past two decades. He was the first black architect to become a member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, and in 1957 he was inducted as the AIA's first black fellow. And he did it as a pioneer: Paul Williams was African-American. By the time he died in 1980, he had created some 2,500 buildings, most of them in and around Los Angeles, but also around the globe. Paul Revere Williams began designing homes and commercial buildings in the early 1920s.
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