The answer to last month's challenge is Dunsmuir Flats in Los Angeles, California. The four attached apartment flats were designed by Gregory Ain in 1937. Ain's architecture is characterized by a complete absence of ornament and by forms in which effects of mass and weight are minimized for the sake of an effect of pure volume. Horizontality--most marked in the ribbon window--and rectilinearity predominate. Flat roofs, smooth and uniform wall surfaces, windows with minimal exterior reveals, that turn the corner of the building, are among the means by which the effect of volume is obtained. People would come off the street to ask, "Is this a house? What does it look like inside?"

The following is from ARCHITECTURAL RECORD, May 1940:
In the Dunsmuir Flat Building, erected on a 49-ft. Los Angeles inside lot, designer Gregory Ain managed to meet an exceptionally rigorous set of basic demands: complete homes for four small families, each with a private patio, cross ventilation, and sunlight in all rooms, and as much privacy for each one of the units as is usually obtained in detached single-family dwellings.

Mr. Ain tells us that the "reactions by house hunters, unacquainted with 'modern architecture,' were interesting. It took a month longer to rent these flats than to rent a conventional flat building erected simultaneously on the same street. But when they were rented, these flats were leased for a year (rather unusual for inexpensive flats in Los Angeles), and the owner reports a 25% higher rental than for neighboring flats of the same size."

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Photo ©John Bertram