Hazel Wood Waterman

Hazel Wood Waterman (1865–1948) was an early 20th century American architect working in an Arts and Crafts—inspired style in southern California. She undertook the first major renovation of Estudillo House, which is one of the oldest surviving examples of Spanish architecture in California.

Hazel Wood Waterman
Portrait of Hazel Wood Waterman in 1921.
Born	Hazel Wood May 5, 1865 Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.A.
Died	July 22, 1948 (aged 83) Berkeley, California, U.S.A.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Architect
Spouse(s)	Waldo Sprague Waterman
Children	Robert, Helen, Waldo
Practice	Hebbard and Gill; Hazel Wood Waterman

Personal life and education

Hazel Wood was born on May 5, 1865, in Tuskegee, Alabama. In the early 1880s, her father, the Reverend Jesse Wood, moved his family to Oroville, California. In 1882–3, while studying art at the University of California, Berkeley, Hazel met her future husband, Waldo Sprague Waterman, whose father was former California governor Robert Waterman.[1]

Hazel and Waldo married in 1889, after which they moved to Cuyamaca, where Waldo was a mine supervisor. In 1891, they moved to San Diego, where Waldo got a job with a railroad.[2] The couple had three children: Robert Wood, Helen Gardner, and Waldo Dean.[1] They joined the local College Graduate Club, through which they made the acquaintance of several people who would later be of great importance to Hazel in her career, notably the architects Irving Gill and William S. Hebbard, landscape designer Kate Sessions, and local businessman Julius Wangenheim.

In 1900, Hazel and Waldo hired Gill to build them a house, and the resulting "Granite Cottage" was a Tudor-inspired building combining a granite lower story with a half-timbered upper story.[2][3] Hazel helped to plan the room designs right down to details such as window frames. Gill was impressed with Hazel's ideas and thought she had a "natural talent" for architecture.[2][3] Certainly she enjoyed the experience enough that she wrote an article about it in 1902 for House Beautiful magazine.[4] It is clear from her description that she was strongly drawn to the American Craftsman aesthetic of natural materials and unornamented forms deployed to harmonize with the surrounding landscape. Like other women architects of the day, she paid special attention to labor-saving features.

Hazel's life changed dramatically in 1903, when Waldo died of pneumonia, leaving the family in difficult financial straits.[2] Hazel started studying architectural drafting via a correspondence course offered by the International Correspondence School.[2] Gill helped out by giving her lessons in perspective drawing at his office in off hours.[2] In 1904, she was hired by Gill's firm, Hebbard and Gill, to do architectural drawings on cloth, and she was allowed to work at home.[1][2][3] She also attended local lectures on the Arts and Crafts movement, and her own mature aesthetic would draw on both Gill's Prairie School—inspired modernism and the American Craftsman style.[2]

Career

After training with Gill, Waterman wanted to go out as an architect on her own, and Gill helped her to do this. Her first commission came in 1905 from two of his former clients, the San Diego socialite Alice Lee (after whom Theodore Roosevelt named his eldest daughter) and her companion Katherine Teats.[3][5] Lee wanted Waterman to design a group of three houses near Balboa Park, and she asked Gill if he would serve as the architect of record on the project while having Waterman do the actual design work.[2][6] Gill agreed to this and supported the inexperienced Waterman by supervising her work.[2][3] Waterman sited the houses in a U shape, giving them a common garden that was designed by Kate Sessions.[2][3] The Lee-Teats house was completed in the Prairie style, similar to Gill's other projects at this time.[7] Through her influence of Californian missions, her 1910 Estudillo House restoration showed the Mexican influence in her architecture. [8]

In 1906, Waterman opened her own office, though she retained close ties to Gill throughout her career. For the first five years or so, she mainly designed Arts and Crafts style residences, many of them expressing her preference for designs that blended indoors with outdoors.[2] In 1911, she received her first non-residential commission, a new building for the Wednesday Club of San Diego (of which she was a longstanding member).[1][3] For this building, she extended her style to include elements—especially stucco—paying homage to the region's Spanish architecture.[2]

Casa de Estudillo - main entrance

Waterman's most famous solo commission came in 1910 from businessman John D. Spreckels to restore Estudillo House in Old Town, San Diego. Estudillo House was one of the oldest surviving examples of Spanish architecture in California, and it had gained some national fame a generation earlier by being associated with Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 bestseller Ramona.[1][3] Waterman worked with historical records in determining what materials should be used in the restoration and what the final plan of the rooms and gardens should be,[3] while also trying to satisfy Spreckels's desire for a renovation that would make it easier to market the site as a Ramona-themed attraction. Her role in this restoration was recognized when Estudillo House was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey of 1937.[3]

Waterman also received a commission from the Children's Home in Balboa Park,[1][3] and she designed a garden for Julius Wangenheim that in 1933 would be awarded a Certificate of Honor by the American Institute of Architects.[1][2] She was able to employ several draftspeople over the years, including Lilian Rice and her own daughter, Helen.[3] She collaborated with local designers and artists such as tile maker Ernest A. Batchelder.[2] Her breadth of design interests showed in frequent papers she gave on diverse subjects to the Wednesday Club.[2]

Waterman took a break from architecture between 1915 and 1920, and seems to have stopped practicing architecture altogether in 1929.[1][2] She retired in Berkeley, California, where she died on July 22, 1948. Her papers are held by the San Diego History Center.[9]

Works[10]

Name	Year	Other Information	Image
Cottage for Mrs. George Baoney	1907
Alterations for Dr. & Mrs. H.G. Leisediring	(no date)
Clayton Residence	1912
Miss Freeze Residence	1908
Captain A.A. Ackerman Residence	1912
Wednesday Club	1909
Mrs. Church Cottage	1915
Judge Walter J. Weed Residence	1928-29
Julius Wangenheim Garden	1917
Estudillo House Restoration	1909		Casa de Estudillo 1975

Publications

A list of written articles published by Waterman about her architectural works.[10] [11]

Article Name	Publication Name	Volume Number	Year	Page Numbers	Other Information	Image
A Granite Cottage in California	The House Beautiful magazine	11	1902	245 - 250
The Influence of an Olden Time	The House Beautiful magazine	14	1903	3 - 9
The Figure of the House	The Federation	7	1910	3 - 5
A City Garden in Southern California, Possessing the Charm of Adaptability to the Out-Of-Door Habits of Life	House and Garden magazine	38	1920	54 - 55, 82
Views Alone Worth A Visit	Los Angeles Times	March	1910
	Sunset magazine
	The Western Architect
	The American Home
	California Federation of Women's Clubs

Further reading

• Thornton, Sally Bullard. Daring to Dream: The Life of Hazel Wood Waterman. San Diego Historical Society, 1987.

References and sources

1. "Hazel Woods Waterman Collection". San Diego Historical Society Research Archives.
2. Zipf, Catherine W. Introduction to Professional Pursuits: Women and the American Arts and Crafts Movement. University of Tennessee Press, 2009.
3. Allaback, Sarah. The First American Women Architects. University of Illinois Press, 2008.
4. Waterman, Hazel Wood. "A Granite Cottage in California." House Beautiful, 1902.
5. "Alice Lee & Katherine Teats" (PDF). Lambda Archives of San Diego Newsletter. No. 49. Winter 2010–11. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 22, 2016.
6. Most sources report Gill as the architect on this project with Waterman assisting. Catherine Zipf, however, cites Waterman's son as authority for her view that Waterman designed the three Lee-Teats buildings under Gill's supervision.
7. Hines, Thomas S. (2010). Architecture of the sun : Los Angeles modernism, 1900-1970. New York: Rizzoli. p. 62. ISBN 978-0847833207.
8. Morgan, Helen (June 1979). "FIVE CALIFORNIA WOMEN ARCHITECTS IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE". California State University, Northridge.
9. Hazel Wood Waterman Collection, MS 42, San Diego Historical Society Research Archives.
10. "Guide to the Hazel Wood Waterman Papers MS 42". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
11. Toward a simpler way of life : the arts & crafts architects of California. Winter, Robert, 1924-. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. 1997. ISBN 9780520919259. OCLC 47010239.CS1 maint: others (link)