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Drive past 1312 Beverly Green today and you’ll see another stucco box — the kind that makes architects weep into their morning espresso. But for 36 years, this spot held the future: steel frames, private gardens for every apartment, and a vision so radical it scared developers into demolishing it.
The Building That Changed Everything (Then Vanished)
Raphael Soriano didn’t just design apartments in 1952 — he declared war on Los Angeles’ dingbat future. The Colby Apartments proved that multi-family housing could offer what sprawling ranch houses promised: light, privacy, and your own patch of earth. Each of the nine rental units had its own entrance and private garden. No shared hallways. No hearing your neighbor’s TV through paper-thin walls.
The penthouse where owner Lucile Colby lived? An entire floor with a roof deck that made Frank Sinatra’s pad look cramped. This wasn’t housing — it was a manifesto in steel and glass, earning three major architectural awards before most Angelenos even knew it existed.
- Built: 1950-1952
- Demolished: 1988 (same year Soriano died)
- Original address: 1312 Beverly Green Drive, Los Angeles
- What’s there now: Generic stucco apartments that prove we learned nothing
The Man Who Saw Steel as Poetry
Born on the Greek island of Rhodes in 1904, Soriano arrived in Los Angeles in 1924 speaking Ladino, Greek, French, and Italian — but his true language became steel. While other architects played with wood and stucco, Soriano obsessed over prefabricated metal frames that could be assembled like elegant Erector sets.
His education reads like a modernist fantasy camp: USC architecture school (where he rebelled against Beaux-Arts tradition), then apprenticeships with Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler. By 1936, he was building his own radical houses. By 1950, he’d designed the official Case Study House that introduced LA to steel-frame living.
The Colby Apartments became his laboratory for scaling up. Could the transparency and efficiency of his single-family homes work for apartments? The answer won him a National AIA Award, proving his peers understood what developers didn’t: this was the future.
What Made Colby Revolutionary
The Steel Skeleton
Soriano’s modular steel frame wasn’t just structure — it was liberation. No load-bearing walls meant floor-to-ceiling glass could wrap entire apartments. The skeleton came prefabricated, assembled on-site like sophisticated Lincoln Logs. This cut construction time and cost while creating spaces that breathed.
Private Gardens for Everyone
Each apartment opened directly to its own garden — not a balcony, not a shared courtyard, but actual earth where tenants could plant tomatoes or just escape. In 1952 Los Angeles, where developers were already cramming units onto lots, this generosity felt almost subversive.
The Penthouse as Prototype
Lucile Colby’s top-floor apartment showed what happened when Soriano had no limits. The entire northern wing became her domain, with a roof deck that turned the building into a private resort. Shulman’s photographs capture parties here — modernist intellectuals sipping martinis above the city, living the future.
- Total units: 10 (9 rentals + 1 owner penthouse)
- Key innovation: Each unit completely self-contained
- Awards won: National AIA Award, Pan American Congress Award, AIA SoCal Honor Award
- Construction method: Prefabricated modular steel frame
Julius Shulman’s Camera Saved What Bulldozers Destroyed
The relationship between Soriano and photographer Julius Shulman was architectural symbiosis at its finest. Soriano designed Shulman’s own steel-and-glass house in 1950; Shulman repaid him by turning every Soriano building into an icon. His Colby Apartments photographs (Job 733 in his archive) didn’t just document — they evangelized.
Today, these images at the Getty Research Institute are the building’s primary existence. Shulman captured morning light streaming through steel mullions, parties on the penthouse deck, and the revolutionary sight of apartment dwellers tending private gardens. Without these photographs, the demolished building would be a footnote. With them, it’s immortal.
The Tragedy of 1988
Soriano died in July 1988, but not before learning his masterpiece was scheduled for demolition. Imagine: spending your final months writing letters to Mayor Tom Bradley about the “Scheduled Demolition of The Colby Apartments.” The building came down that same year, replaced by exactly the kind of stucco mediocrity Soriano spent his career fighting.
Only 12 of Soriano’s 50 buildings survive today. The Colby Apartments’ destruction feels especially cruel — this wasn’t some minor work but a triple award-winner that proved apartments could be as refined as custom homes. Its demolition revealed an ugly truth: Los Angeles talks about valuing architecture but routinely destroys its best examples for short-term profit.
Finding Soriano’s Ghost: Archives and Echoes
The Paper Trail
Cal Poly Pomona holds the Raphael S. Soriano Collection — the building’s DNA in drawings and documents. Original presentation boards show his thinking: how steel could create freedom, how every apartment deserved dignity. Construction documents reveal the precision required to prefabricate paradise.
The Photographic Record
The Getty Research Institute houses Shulman’s negatives and prints. Researchers can request Job 733 to see what we lost: shadows playing across private patios, the penthouse terrace hosting cocktail parties, the building glowing at dusk like a steel lantern.
The Academic Legacy
Architecture schools still teach the Colby Apartments as a case study in what’s possible when vision meets technique. 35mm slides from university collections occasionally surface in estate sales — professors who couldn’t let go of this perfect example of urban modernism.
- Primary archive: Cal Poly Pomona (drawings, documents)
- Photo archive: Getty Research Institute (Shulman Collection, Job 733)
- Digital access: Limited — most materials require in-person research
- Best book: “Raphael Soriano” monographs include Colby coverage
Why Colby Still Matters
Drive through Los Angeles today and count the apartment buildings that make you stop. The stucco boxes multiply like architectural cancer while we demolish the cures. The Colby Apartments offered a different path: density with dignity, efficiency with elegance, steel frames that freed floor plans from convention.
Current developers claim such quality is “economically unfeasible,” yet Soriano built this in 1952 with prefab components. The real barrier isn’t cost — it’s imagination. Every “luxury” apartment complex with fake shutters and beige stucco is a monument to our failure to learn from Colby’s example.
Experiencing Soriano Today
While you can’t visit the Colby Apartments, you can still experience Soriano’s vision. His Shulman House and Studio (1950) occasionally opens for tours. The Lukens House (1950) and Curtis House (1950) show his steel-frame genius in single-family form. Drive past 1312 Beverly Green and imagine what stood there — then get angry enough to demand better from contemporary architects.
For deep dives, schedule research appointments at Cal Poly Pomona or the Getty. Touch the drawings, study the photographs, understand what we lost. The Colby Apartments may be gone, but their challenge remains: will we build housing that elevates human life, or will we keep producing profitable mediocrity?
Soriano knew the answer in 1952. We demolished it in 1988. The question now is whether we’ll ever have the courage to build it again.