Richard Longstreth provides a detailed picture of the early careers of four architects—Bernard Maybeck, Willis Polk, Ernest Coxhead, and A.C. Schweinfurth—who had a decisive impact on the course of design in the San Francisco Bay Area and who stand as significant contributors to American architecture.

Richard Longstreth is Professor of American Civilization and Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, George Washington University. His most recent book is City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (1997).

"[A] thorough, thoughtful, and . . . entertaining appraisal of four architects whose early careers in California constitute the beginnings of high-style professional design in the area."—William H. Jordy, House & Garden

"Ambitious [and] successful, precisely because it does not idealize the architects. They instead are placed . . . in the geographic, urban, and intellectual climate in which they worked."—Aaron Betsky, Progressive Architecture

"Through this look into the early lives and careers of these architects we come away with a more perceptive understanding of the practice of architecture in America at the turn of the century."—David Gebhard, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians