Why the SoCal studio where iconic murals were created remains carefully preserved today

Southern California sometimes feels like a small town — its streets, blocks, neighborhoods blurring into one another from familiarity. But step outside your usual radius and you can land in what feels like an entirely different world.

That was me in Claremont, seeing a new eye doctor whose office played a surprisingly important role in Southern California art history.

That morning, my 30-mile drive on the 10 Freeway felt like ellipses of strip malls, bigger strip malls and even bigger strip malls.

Until I got to Claremont Eye Associates — two buildings, one used for file storage off the multilane Foothill Boulevard.

Behind a dense garden of cacti and California native plants, a bird cage once sat, I would later find out, so that artists could practice sketching the birds.

One of the mosaic birds on the exterior wall of the main building.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

“ They would also practice making mosaics of the birds,” said Adam Arenson, a historian at Iona University in New York.

Some of these pieces made their way to the exterior wall of the main building, which since the 1980s has been where eye patients are seen.

“ People have a hard time realizing it's a doctor's office,” said John McDermott III, my doctor at Claremont Eye Associates. His family has owned the property for some five decades.

“I've heard a whole bunch of different things that said, ‘Oh, I thought that was a Buddhist temple and, you know, I thought it was an art gallery.’ And they are surprised to see that it's three ophthalmologists working there,” he said.

The main office building of Claremont Eye Associates.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

Millard Sheets used the taller of the two buildings to lay out and set the mosaics. Claremont Eye Associates uses the building to store files.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

I guessed that the office had a past life as a small art museum. Turns out, I wasn’t far off.

It was the site of the Millard Sheets studio, where giant, breathtaking mosaic murals were made for more than a hundred buildings that dot the region.

Pomona Valley’s very own

Millard Owens Sheets

(

By permission from CalART.com

)

Millard Sheets was born in Pomona in 1907 and raised by his grandparents on a horse ranch. As a child, Arenson said, Sheets displayed a flair for painting and watercolor, winning his first local competition at age 12. He went on to study at Chouinard Art Institute — the predecessor of CalArts — and was asked to teach before he even graduated. In 1932, he taught at Scripps College as its only art instructor, quickly building out an entire department, while transforming Claremont into a thriving local art colony over a two-decade long tenure at the school.

“Millard Sheets was involved with so many of the art projects in Los Angeles. It's true that his name is generally not as well-known as his influence,” said Arenson, author of Banking on Beauty: Millard Sheets and Midcentury Commercial Architecture in California.

While at Scripps, Arenson said, Sheets began constructing a work studio — a hop-and-skip off what is now busy Foothill Boulevard.

“ I've seen pictures when it was built in the ‘50s and there was nothing there but dirt,” McDermott said.

The site of the Millard Sheets studio before it was built.

(

Courtesy John McDermott III

)

The office of Claremont Eye Associations in Claremont.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

Millard Sheets design studio

The plaque denoting the studio is still in front of Claremont Eye Associates.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

Historian Arenson said construction was finished somewhere in the second half of the 1950s, coinciding with the completion of the first Home Savings and Loan building Sheets was tapped to design by businessman Howard Ahmanson.

That branch on Wilshire Boulevard — with its mosaic mural, stained glass and long rectangular frame — was so beloved by Angelenos that Sheets ended up designing some 120 Home Savings and Loan branches in total, creating a sort of unified aesthetic across these works.

• Go deeper
  
  • The Iconic Murals Of Millard Sheets Are Disappearing From LA
  • A map of Sheets studio projects historian Adam Arenson has compiled

Since he wasn’t a licensed architect, Sheets assembled those with the expertise at his newly built studio in Claremont for these undertakings.

“It was built as a workspace for a number of architects, painters, mosaic assistants,” said Arenson, adding that Sheets was responsible for many of the sketching, subject and color decisions.

Millard Sheets studio being built.

(

Courtesy John McDermott III

)

(

Courtesy John McDermott III

)

“The team under him were the people doing the mosaics and training new generations of Scripps and Claremont students to join the studio and do the work,” he said.

That included mosaic muralist Denis O’Connor and Sue Lautmann Hertel, a Scripps graduate who became an integral part of the studio and was herself a noted artist. Her paintings still hang in the lobby of the main Claremont Eye Associates building.

The eye doctor’s office

John McDermott III was born and raised in Claremont and returned to gradually take over the business from his father after going away for medical school.

Growing up, what McDermott remembered was a land of lemon groves, before tract homes and suburbanization started to rapidly take over in the 1970s.

A painting by Sue Lautmann Hertel in the waiting room of Claremont Eye Associates.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

“ Claremont back then was a pretty small, tight community,” McDermott said.

He doesn’t know how his parents met Sheets, but knew from overhearing conversations that he was a renowned artist.

The younger McDermott would come to know the Sheets studio well, after his father acquired the building in the mid-1970s.

“ I remember when they bought the building, because shortly thereafter, I was recruited to clean the building and also help out with the landscaping,” McDermott said.

“I was always fascinated by it. Because when I was inside and cleaning the bathrooms or whatever, I always was impressed, you know, with the marble floors and the mosaics. And likewise [the] outside,” he added. “As a kid, I thought that was pretty cool.”

And he got a rare front row seat for the Sheets studio in action, because the artist and his team were still working at the building for several years after it changed hands.

“I remember going in there and seeing the various artists that worked there,” McDermott said. “They had these huge buckets of tiles, as a little kid we'd always want to grab a few, because they were shiny.”

A mosaic mural on the side of one of the buildings.

(

Fiona Ng

/

LAist

)

McDermott said the property has been kept as intact as possible. A small addition was put in, attached to one of the buildings. It was so seamlessly done, he said, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Some years ago, his wife, Leea, and a former neighbor — an architect who had worked with Richard Neutra — designed and installed the landscaping. But they had to get rid of the bird cage after repeated acts of vandalism.

The inside was also largely preserved, save for the walls added to create exam rooms.

The doctor's favorite area of the entire compound remains sacred.

“ Millard's office is where I sit with my two partners, [at] the same desk that he built in the ‘50s,” McDermott said. “ That's where Millard used to sit. This beautiful desk and these high vaulted ceilings. I really love that space.”

He promised a tour the next time I’m there. But many people, McDermott said, show up unannounced to take in the garden, the mosaics, all the history.

“ I'm a real believer that architecture really influences how people act and feel,” he said. “Beautiful spaces like that, whether it's a doctor's office or a school, really enhance people's well-being.”

Details

• Claremont Eye Associates
  655 E. Foothill Blvd., Claremont
• Esotouric, the gem of all things L.A., has offered guided tours of Sheets’ works in Pomona and Claremont led by Arenson. No word on the next installment yet, but the team has put together this wonderful guide.