Pleasure Gardens, Movies, and Malls: How Florence Yoch and Ruth Shellhorn Reimagined the California Landscape

Florence Yoch (1890–1972) and Ruth Shellhorn (1909–2006) exerted a remarkable influence on both the physical and fantasy landscapes of Southern California.

Shellhorn brought Modernist precision to campuses and shopping centers and, in Disneyland, pioneered the notion that a garden could encompass an amusement park. She was also the landscape architect for Santa Monica’s Civic Auditorium!

Yoch created Classical drama in Hollywood moguls’ gardens and the landscapes of their blockbusters, from Gone With the Wind to The Good Earth.

Kelly Comras, author of Ruth Shellhorn (University of Georgia Press, 2016) and Erin Chase, associate curator of architecture and photography at the Huntington, which houses Florence Yoch’s papers, assess these masterful innovators of landscape in CPF’s series on California women architects.

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