Irving Gill may be a household name in La Jolla for his designs of landmark buildings in the area, but a recent discovery has unlocked a new chapter in the life and death of the famed architect.
After decades of common belief that Gill’s ashes had been scattered following his death and cremation in 1936, his remains were found earlier this year in a closet in the Cypress View Mausoleum, Mortuary and Crematory next to Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego.
Now that they have been collected, Gill will have a funeral Monday, Oct. 7.
“It was shocking,” James Guthrie, president of the Irving J. Gill Foundation, said of the discovery. “We all thought his ashes were scattered. But no one had done the deep dive. …
“[Gill] was such an important person to San Diego in terms of the built environment. San Diego looks the way it does because of him. We still build based on the style he created.”
Gill, born in rural Tully, N.Y., in 1870, moved at a young age with his family to nearby Syracuse, where he was raised, according to the foundation. At age 19, he moved to Chicago, then to San Diego and Los Angeles.
His last days, amid the Depression, were spent in Carlsbad on his ranch, where he and his wife, Marion, managed their avocado crops.
On Oct. 7, 1936, Gill suffered a heart attack while on the ranch and was taken to a hospital in San Diego. Marion was believed to be at the couple’s primary home in Palos Verdes, 90 miles north of Carlsbad and 120 miles north of the hospital.
Gill died later that day.
After that, Guthrie said, “there is a bit of a mystery as to what happened.” Gill was cremated that day or the next, Guthrie said, which would require authorization from family. But, he said, there is no record of who gave permission.
“Some family member, likely his nephew or his wife, communicated with the hospital to cremate him,” Guthrie said. “We knew from biographies that he was cremated, but we didn’t have a lot of details. Some said his ashes were scattered … which I think came from Gill’s descendants.”
As it turns out, the ashes were stored in a cardboard box with the word “Hold” written on it, meaning they were being held until a family member could collect them. For reasons unknown, that never happened.
“He was put in a cabinet waiting for family to come get him,” Guthrie said. “So he sat there for almost 90 years.”
However, some years ago, volunteers with the organization Find A Grave — an online database of cemetery records — researched who was buried at Mount Hope for its files. They also went through the paper records of whose remains were waiting at Cypress View.
There was Irving Gill.
“They didn’t know who he was, so they entered him into the record and that was that,” Guthrie said. “Some time later, a Gill fan was on Find A Grave and it popped up, but the year before it would not have been there. I got an email and asked if we knew anything about it. We didn’t, so we investigated and asked if it was true.”
After validating the discovery, the foundation set out to collect Gill’s remains. “We couldn’t just leave him there,” Guthrie said.
However, having no one descended from Gill, the foundation was not allowed to do so.
The organization set out to find living relatives but was unsuccessful. San Diego County did its own search for relatives but couldn’t find anyone, Guthrie said.
The county eventually released the remains to the foundation earlier this year.
“Thinking of him in a box on a shelf seemed disrespectful, so this was out of respect,” Guthrie said. “There needs to be some finality. He had such an important life, the end should have some importance, too.”
Gill’s ashes were transferred to an urn, and on Oct. 7 they will be buried in a funeral at Mount Hope. The Rev. Mark Hargreaves, pastor of St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla, will officiate the service.
“I feel honored to be able to play a part in committing Gill’s remains to their final resting place,” Hargreaves said. “It’s like being able to play a small part in history.”
The foundation wants a gravestone representative of Gill’s architectural style and is working to raise about $15,000.
Gill designed a dozen buildings in La Jolla, several of which still stand. Notably, the Recreation Center, the Woman’s Club building and halls within The Bishop’s School retain the signature arches of Gill’s designs and serve as examples of the tilt-up or tilt-slab construction for which he was known.
His best-known work in La Jolla may be the 1916 home he designed for famed philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, which later became the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. It has undergone several changes over the decades, including its most recent four-year renovation that ended in 2022.
Some say Gill’s relationship with Scripps led to his notoriety and opportunity to develop more works in the area.
“He hit it off with Ellen Browning Scripps upon coming to San Diego,” said architectural historian and La Jolla resident Diane Kane. “Architects can do wonderful work, but clients make all the difference. They can inspire you, support you and make the vision come to life.
“He and Ellen had a vision of a model community before such things were common. The stuff they did was incremental, but it grew. It looks like it was master-planned as a piece, but it was designed in pieces. You don’t really see that — maybe on college campuses, but for residential stuff at that point, not so much. Because it had their vision, we preserved it and we still have it today. It’s a unique entity.” ♦
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