LA real estate
fromLos Angeles Times
12 years agoRestored Ford estate in Ojai is no Edsel
A 1929 Spanish Colonial Revival estate built for Henry Ford's cousin in Ojai has completed a four-year restoration and is listed for $8.95 million.
George Washington Smith, widely regarded as the founder of the Spanish Colonial Revival style, designed scores of houses in and around Santa Barbara during an architectural career that lasted only a dozen years before his death in 1930. Today those houses, with their signature mix of whitewashed walls, red-tiled roofs, balconies, courtyards, fountains, elaborate carved woodwork and wrought iron, are keenly sought after, according to area real estate agents.
With their red-tile roofs and stucco walls so commonplace that they've become part of the landscape, the homes of the Spanish Colonial Revival tapped the climate, local materials and an idealized view of history to become the signature style of Southern California.