In Conversation with David Travers, Editor of Arts & Architecture

David Travers (1926–2017) was the last editor of Arts & Architecture (Figure 1). He acquired the magazine in September 1962 and ran it until he had to close it in 1967. Despite having to deal with an extremely difficult financial situation, Travers continued the magazine’s avant-garde path and managed to keep the Case Study House program functioning.¹ He even expanded it with the launch of the Case Study Apartments, a new dimension introduced to spread the program to tract housing.² However, unlike his predecessor in the post, John Entenza (1905–84), whose name is inextricably linked with the myths and the historiography of postwar California architecture, Travers has been largely and systematically ignored.³

This essay is primarily an edited, excerpted transcription of a conversation I had with Travers at his home in Santa Monica, California, in 2013. “I am the worst interview in the world,” he warned with a laugh. However, his words provide new information about the architectural publishing industry and the goals and vision of one of the most influential magazines of the mid-twentieth century.⁴ At the time of the interview, Travers was the only survivor of the whole magazine enterprise, since John Entenza, Julius Shulman, Esther McCoy, all the magazine’s staff members, and the architects who participated in the Case Study House program had already passed away. Therefore, Travers gave the last living testimony of what happened at Arts & Architecture. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interviewer: Daniel Díez Martínez

Interviewee: David Travers

Date: 21 August 2013

Location: Santa Monica, California

“We were just a little Southern California magazine.”

DDM: How did you decide to buy Arts & Architecture? Do you remember how much you paid for it?

DT: I met John Entenza casually. We shared a lawyer. I was very impressed when I met him. He had become director of the Graham Foundation and was living in Chicago by then (Figure 2). John was trying to run the magazine from there. He was a lot of distance from it and couldn’t really put his hands on the magazine well. He was losing something like $1,000 a month. At that time, I had a small piece of commercial property in Brentwood. The lawyer who introduced us suggested the idea of trading and we agreed. John took the small commercial building, and I took the magazine.

DDM: Did you have any prior experience in the publishing industry or with California modernist architecture?

DT: I had always liked the typewriter. I had worked for Los Angeles Mirror and the Hollywood Citizen-News as a general assignment reporter. I knew Arts & Architecture, but that’s all. It was a pretty picture book to me. I wasn’t a subscriber, and architecture was not one of my consuming concerns. I thought it would be simple. Newspapers are daily and magazines once a month. Piece of cake. But it’s not that easy. I spent two years just learning how to put the magazine out.

I soon realized we were just a little Southern California magazine. On the East Coast they didn’t pay much attention to the residential architecture that was being done in California, or to Arts & Architecture. They looked down on us. They were aware of our architects’ work, but still they were reluctant to publish it because they liked big buildings, not houses. Advertisers too. They preferred big buildings.

DDM: However, the CSH program today is considered a milestone in the history of American architecture.

DT: Of course. It was very important for many local architects who were totally unknown before Arts & Architecture. Some thought the program was a real estate boondoggle for John. That’s because in the statement he said the magazine would be the client.⁵ But it was the client in name only, not in money. Others said that the sponsors controlled how the houses were designed, but I don’t think so. As far as I know, the only effect the manufacturers had was the material they would give. But nothing to do with the design of the project, which corresponded solely to the architect. If he worked out details, it was because there had to be adjustments, but not because the manufacturer was requiring any design change. To be honest, I don’t know what the difference in quality can be between Bethlehem Steel and U.S. Steel, but there can’t be much. [laughs]

However, to my shame, I have to admit that there was an unpleasant episode—the Janss House, which was sponsored by the L.A. Brick Company.⁶ They worked with Buff and Hensman, and God knows why, it became a luxury house, which was not what the CSH program was about (Figure 3). It was more of a Bel-Air house. Huge and beautiful, a lovely house if you like marble and tile! [laughs] They didn’t even know the magazine. Elaine Jones was handling their publicity and she offered us a contract of a full page for the next twelve issues (Figure 4).⁷ That was very nice, a lot of money then. I took it. And I regret it. It didn’t help the program. It helped us live a little longer, but I shouldn’t have done it.

DDM: What were your intentions for continuing the CSH program?

DT: I think my most interesting contribution to the program was the Case Study Apartments. It was sort of a gesture towards something more urban than single-family housing.⁸ I had been thinking about it for some time, so I had lunch with Victor Gruen, since he was the urban planning expert. I asked him, “Do you think this is a good move, to go towards multifamily housing in the Case Study House program?” and he said, “It won’t mean a thing, David. That’s not enough. What we need is Case Study Cities!” [laughs] He thought big. However, I loved what Al Beadle and Alan Dailey did for Case Study Apartments #1 (Figures 5 and 6). If we had lasted out, we would have continued with more apartments. We had a second project by Killingsworth and Brady, but it never got built (Figure 7). That certainly would have been a major change.

“A painful struggle.”

DDM: What difficulties did you encounter when you started running the magazine?

DT: Number one problem was learning. And number two was money. Putting the magazine out was a painful struggle. We had a good number of subscriptions, and advertising gave us some income, but it was never enough to cover.⁹ An issue cost about $3,000. At that time, between subscriptions and advertising I was getting about $2,000. The rest came out of my wallet. I was on my knees. I even mortgaged my house!

But it wasn’t always like this. During the good years of the Case Study Houses, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the magazine made quite a bit of money. The magazine was like sixty or even seventy pages, half of them ads.¹⁰ And it was because of the excitement of the program. There was no real analysis behind it. It looked like a winner. “Look, there are 3,000 people coming to see these houses. We gotta sell something! Let’s get on board here.” They were doing pretty well. Robert Cron was the advertising manager during those years.¹¹ He was a good advertising salesman. He shared his office with his wife and his lover. The three of them working together! This shows you what kind of personal skills he had. Then, it turned out that he had a warehouse full of products from the manufacturers participating in the program. When John found out, he immediately fired him.

DDM: What was the main reason for the magazine’s budgetary crisis?

DT: We had almost no advertising at that point. We did some numbers and found that the financial breakeven point was ten pages of advertising. Never made it. Arcadia, Howard Miller, and Bethlehem Steel were loyal, and they would put ads in, but very few others did (Figure 8). That’s why they didn’t put my name on the magazine for a while. I left John Entenza [on the masthead] for several months as the editor, worrying about the possibility of reactions like “Oh, John’s not there anymore? We cut off the advertising.”¹² I didn’t need that. I remember a survey on architecture magazines. One respondent wrote that his favorite was Arts & Architecture “because there is so little advertising, ha ha.” That hurt.

DDM: Why did advertising drop so dramatically?

DT: In the 1960s, when I came to the magazine, we didn’t even have an in-house salesman, like John did. Advertising was outsourced through an agency. The industry was getting more sophisticated and going through many changes. Advertising agencies were getting smarter, and they were doing circulation studies at that point. They found out that the AIA Journal had a print run of 44,000 copies, and that 100 percent of the readers were architects. Progressive Architecture similar. Maybe not quite that many architects, but mostly they were. The Architectural Record was even tougher. They were 50,000. Same with all the shelter magazines. They had huge print runs.

We just couldn’t compete with them. When I came aboard, we had a circulation of some 8,500, and only three of them were architects. Our maximum was 12,500.¹³ And we even had 300 subscribers in the USSR! I couldn’t believe it. I’m so surprised the State Department never told us something like “What secrets are you telling the communists?” [laughs]

DDM: Weren’t 12,500 subscribers enough to survive?

DT: No. The profit with subscribers was very small. Advertising was the key, and by then, we just weren’t considered. Our advertising agency became aware who the market audience really was. They did a survey and found out that on the average, twenty people read every copy sold. So our real circulation was twenty times 12,500. But the real problem was that not even half of our subscribers were architects, so the manufacturers were not interested in our audience. They wanted the architects and contractors who read Architectural Record or AIA Journal because these people selected what steel, wood, or glass to use in their buildings. The general public only picks the furniture. The rest is none of their business.

So, if I had to do it all over again, I would go much more heavily on the furniture. John did some, and so did I, but not enough. There were some articles on drapery, on fabrics, or on chairs, but it wasn’t a steady thing. And yet the furniture companies were our best and most loyal advertisers. Knoll, the Millers [Herman and Howard], Van Keppel & Green, and the Frank Brothers saw the value of reaching our public and stayed with us until the end.¹⁴

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

DDM: How did Arts & Architecture come to an end?

DT: Little by little, all the manufacturers stopped advertising in the magazine. The guys from the agency explained to me that it was due to the economic crisis. I kept asking them, “What’s the matter? Why don’t we get more advertising?” One of them said to me, “Look, what we do is use Arts & Architecture to get in the door, because it’s a prestigious magazine. We like to tell our clients we represent Arts & Architecture. Then we sell the advertising in other magazines.” That’s what we were for advertising agencies.

Arts & Architecture was making me lose a lot of money, so I decided to get rid of it. I found two salesmen who fell in love with the magazine. A couple of real tough guys, the kind that had three martinis at lunch and then back to work. [laughs] They wanted to buy the magazine and I said, “If you can get ten pages of advertising every month for one year, I’ll give you 49 percent of the magazine.” We went to a lawyer, wrote it up, and added one stipulation—they should pay for the next two issues. And so they did. They paid for the next two issues of the magazine. Of course, they never got ten pages of ads.

DDM: Were there more potential buyers?

DT: UCLA was also interested. It was just starting its School of Architecture, and the dean, George Dudley, thought it would be nice if they had a magazine.¹⁵ We started working to try to set this up. Everything was terribly slow, and by the time it got to the UCLA Board of Regents, it was June [1967]. They all went on vacation for three months, but I got the okay of the Board of Regents. It looked like a shoo-in.

I called the partners at Victor Gruen Associates, who had also expressed an interest in buying the magazine, to explain my situation.¹⁶ I told them that there was a good chance to go ahead with Arts & Architecture permanently thanks to the support of UCLA, but that I had to keep the magazine alive for three more months and I needed $3,000—$1,000 a month. Herman Goodman, the managing partner, called me for lunch. I came over and he said, “Before we go in, we’re giving you the money, so let’s just have lunch and chat.” He did it so nicely, no humiliation. I still get tears thinking about it.

DDM: What happened next?

DT: The money lasted me through the summer. Then UCLA backed out, so I had to look for other options. They called me from the Weyerhaeuser Foundation. Allan Temko and Nathaniel Owings were on their Board of Directors, and they wanted to buy the magazine. However, Nat didn’t think much of me as an editor. He preferred Allan. Allan was a very fluent and articulate man, a wonderful speaker. He’d been in architecture forever. He was the architectural critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and had been working for Peter Blake at the Architectural Forum. He would’ve been good for Arts & Architecture too.

The Weyerhaeuser Foundation finally bought the magazine. In fact, the last issue was done under their auspices. It was the water issue (Figures 9 and 10).¹⁷ But by the time we went to press, I knew they were backing out. They found that getting the magazine could help with taxes, but they didn’t want to go for a continuing obligation like funding and putting the magazine out.

DDM: At that time, several architecture magazines went into crisis.

DT: Yes, Arts & Architecture was not the only one that folded. I remember Architectural Forum.¹⁸ Peter Blake was the editor for years and years. He got the Taconic Foundation, which was run by Stephen Currier and his wife, to give him $5 million.¹⁹ And he blew it! On full-color this, the most expensive paper there . . . He went through it in a year and a half. All gone. With $5 million, Arts & Architecture could have been produced in perpetuity! I was so furious that I never did speak to him again. It was just outrageous what he did. I published an editorial on architectural magazines where I said they were all competing doing the same things—same architects, same buildings, same purposes.²⁰ It didn’t make me any friends amongst the other editors. [laughs]

DDM: What were your plans if you had had funding to continue publishing Arts & Architecture?

DT: By then, I was confident enough in my ability to put the magazine out, so I would’ve changed the editorial approach to single-subject issues like the one on water. In fact, my proposal to the Weyerhaeuser Foundation had a list for the next fifteen or so. Address the exurbanization of America, show how legislation plus finances were transforming our country’s geography so that everything was flowing out from the city instead of into the city. Another issue would deal with freeways and our transportation system, which was built to encourage growth. Unfortunately, it encouraged suburbs and it still does. Another would be on museums: Do they have to be mausoleums? These kinds of topics were interesting, perfect for monographic issues. And then, pick it up graphically so it still looks like Arts & Architecture. That was the change I was going to make. That, plus get some ads, of course. [laughs]

DDM: How would you describe your experience of running Arts & Architecture?

DT: Oh, it brought me a lot of good times. That magazine had a soul. It was part of me, and I became part of it. Even though I knew there were problems, I enjoyed going to work every day. It was very rewarding. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Although he ran Arts & Architecture for five years and, upon its closure, continued in the architecture field for the rest of his life, when David Travers passed away in August 2017, there was no tribute to him in any specialized medium.²¹ Four years earlier, when I proposed to interview him, he replied with sharp irony, “I will scratch out a response to your questions for the record, for your dissertation, and for posterity,” an answer that could be read as an awareness of being overlooked, compared with his always praised predecessor, John Entenza (Figure 11).²²

The testimony by Travers recorded in this essay is primary source material that provides valuable information. He discusses the relationships among manufacturers, architects, and the magazine in the CSH program, raising interesting questions about the motivations that shaped the designs of these fabled and highly influential midcentury houses. A lot is revealed about the ins and outs of CSH #28, a controversial project whose magnitude and materiality fueled a very negative perception of it.²³ Although he regretted giving the sponsors too much control of the design process, Travers clarifies here that the introduction of this project into the program was conditioned by a profitable advertising contract, one that he had to sign if he hoped to see the magazine through its economic difficulties.

Travers also discusses the economics of advertising in a magazine like Arts & Architecture, adding a new layer to the historiography of how modernist architecture was published in the mid-twentieth century in the United States. The monetary viability of the magazine, like that of any other, was based not on subscriptions but on advertising. During Travers’s tenure as editor, the number of subscribers to Arts & Architecture almost doubled, but it was the lack of companies interested in buying advertising space that led the magazine to bankruptcy and closure, a stormy episode addressed in this essay that has remained undisclosed until now.

Finally, it is interesting to analyze the editor’s reaction to the emergence of positions contrary to urban sprawl that were brewing in the 1960s. Travers talks about his interest in launching a new phase of the CSH project in the form of the Case Study Apartments, the purpose of which was “to try to lay to rest the misconception that good design is an unjustifiable and impractical luxury when applied to income property.”²⁴ He also shares his plans to redirect the magazine’s focus toward ecology and urban planning. The final issue, dated July/August 1967, on the theme of water, was the first and only monographic issue ever published, although many had been planned. All this suggests that Arts & Architecture could have metamorphosed from a magazine of avant-garde architecture and design into a magazine of avant-garde design criticism, which would have been fascinating.