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Esther McCoy is best known as the architecture writer who helped shape the story of Modernism in Los Angeles. Less known is the nearly year-long period she spent in Mexico in 1951. During this time, she wrote about key architectural developments in the country...
“The [“Passersby 02: Esther McCoy” exhibition] presents [McCoy] as this kind of bridge,” says Esparza, “from L.A. to Mexico and from Mexico to L.A.”
— Los Angeles Times
Architecture historian and critic Esther McCoy is the spotlight of a micro-exhibition called “Passersby 02: Esther McCoy”, which closes this Sunday at Museo Jumex. The exhibition investigates how McCoy's writings on key architectural developments in Mexico during her extended stay in... View full entry
From Esther McCoy's 1981 memorial to Konrad Wachsmann:"Finally all internees who wanted to, were permitted to join the French army. Konrad did. They heard then about the Dunkirk disaster. When Konrad’s regiment crossed the Loire River, the Germans were already in Marseilles. They had destroyed... View full entry
I met this gray-haired woman. I lit her cigarette and she asked me what I was doing there? I said I just wanted to meet some architects and learn where I could go to school.
"She said, okay, 'If you have a car, tomorrow go to this place in Santa Monica called SciArc, it's a new school. Ask for Ray Kappe and tell them that Esther McCoy sent you.'
— kcet.org
KCET just sat down with Archinect senior editor Orhan Ayyüce for an interview about his Turkish roots, the arrival in Los Angeles, and his unlikely introduction to the world of architecture. View full entry
McCoy had the opportunity to create a school and then witness its foibles, its meanderings, and opine about its legacy. — Architectural Record
Alexandra Lange reviews the recently published Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader. The book is the first published collection of her writings and includes out-of-print essays, articles, short stories, as well as previously unpublished lectures, correspondence, and... View full entry
Esther McCoy is having a moment. The architecture critic and historian, who died in 1989 at age 85, is the subject of a smart Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, building on McCoy's deep connections with Rudolph Schindler himself. The show is accompanied by a Getty-funded catalog, and early next year East of Borneo Press will publish "Piecing Together Los Angeles," an anthology of McCoy's essays on architecture. — Christopher Hawthorne, latimes.com
I met Esther McCoy in1978 AIA Regional Conference, Newport Beach, California. I was there as a young wonderer hoping to find information on architecture and study it. Unknowingly and randomly I walked into one of the conference rooms and listened an inspired young architect, Eric Moss, showing... View full entry
The bulldozers wait for the trees and gardens, which, for a half century, matured. For the House, which, time has not touched. We prize the distant past,but if the immediate past is ripped away, there will be no distant past for the future. The continuity will be broken. Our heritage diminished. There is a hole in the fabric of History. - Ester McCoy — Smithsonian AAA
Dodge House 1916 (1965)This film, produced by architectural historian Esther McCoy, documents the Walter Luther Dodge house in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, and the life of its architect, Irving John Gill. The film was made to advocate for its preservation during a 7-year battle to... View full entry
