La Barranca (Santa Barbara, Calif.)

Scope Note: In 1923, Ed and Lucile Borein built their home, La Barranca, on Santa Barbara's Mesa. It was a single-story home and studio complex based on the indigenous Hopi dwellings that Borein had sketched for years. The Boreins hired Hopi artisans to construct the adobe to confer further legitimacy to their aesthetic. At one point, Borein suggested to Lucile that they should abandon standard door frames and enter and exit the house on ladders, in full Hopi style. Although this was a joke, Borein was sincere in his complex and heartfelt Western sensibility, even to the point of drawing distinctions between Native American and Spanish Colonial versions of authenticity. La Barranca survived until 1973 when it was bulldozed and replaced by a condominium complex, over the vigorous protests of preservationists.

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