Added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 21, 1984

Charles and Henry Greene, patron saints of West Coast craftsman architecture, secured their legacies in and around Pasadena. But there’s plenty of Greene & Greene to explore in other corners of Los Angeles. In fact one of their most historically important designs, the Jennie A. Reeve House, was built in Long Beach. 

The House

Completed in 1904, the Reeve House was a significant one for Greene & Greene because it brought together so many of the creative features that they had experimented with before, but never harmonized into a single building. On the outside, you’ll see a lot of the trademarks that betray the Greenes’ hands. The timber superstructure, exploding beyond the walls with exposed rafter tails and wide eaves. The multiple gables, with their rooflines intersecting like some cubist painting come to life. The sensitive integration of brick and stone. The rows of casement windows, earth tone shingles, the squat front door and signature lantern at the entryway. It’s all there, and it all works. 

The inside of the Reeve House was just as painstakingly crafted. Built-in cabinets and detailed wood paneling were custom designed for the house and its setting. In its original location at 3rd Street and Cedar Ave, the Reeve House was just a few blocks from the ocean, and it sensitively responded to the seaside climate. The Greenes placed long bands of windows on each side, which helped with circulation and let light penetrate deep into the house. A solarium built into one side offered panoramic views of the ocean. Three fireplaces form a core of warmth in the center of the house, while the beautifully latticed screens under each of the gables turned a purely functional part of the house into a swoon-worthy detail.  

The Reeve House was also a test case for Greene & Greene’s practice of controlling every aspect of design, so that they could all be integrated into a cohesive whole. From the rounded pegs that stuck out of the cabinetry, to the custom made furniture, to the leaded glass designs that unified doors and lamps, windows and china cabinets, Greene & Greene oversaw it all. They even designed a simple post-and-rail fence and gate for the house, and the walkways that surrounded it. This idea of gesamtkunstwerk – or “total work of art” – was employed to even greater effect in the Gamble, Blacker and Thorsen houses just a few years later. But it all started at the Reeve.

The Clients

This kind of attention paid to materials and craftsmanship requires a client with taste, trust and money, and Jennie A. Reeve had all three. Reeve was a successful real estate investor and businesswoman at a time when “businesswoman” wasn’t a very common title. She was also a suffragist and a champion of other progressive women’s causes, and served on the first Board of the Long Beach Library after it was taken over by the city. Most fortuitously: Reeve was the mother of a very happy Greene & Greene client, Mary Darling, who had recently hired the Greenes to build a house for her in Claremont, their first house outside of Pasadena. 

After Reeve died, the house was nearly demolished to make room for Long Beach’s expanding business district. In 1917 it was on blocks, awaiting its fate when a doctor named V. Ray Townsend happened by, bought the house and had it moved to 10th Street and Pine Avenue. Townsend was apparently as enamored of Greene & Greene as the rest of us. He rented out the Reeve House for a decade, while living in a different Greene & Greene – the very same one that Reeve’s daughter had commissioned in Claremont! (Whether this was a very strange coincidence or there was some other relationship between Townsend and the Reeve family, I do not know. But it’s a cool historical tidbit either way)

Fast forward to 1925, and Townsend hires Henry Greene (the Greene & Greene firm had dissolved by then) to supervise another move for the Reeve House, further inland to its current location near the Virginia Country Club, just south of Rancho Los Cerritos. The move was completed in 1927, and Henry designed a two-story addition to the house, some new furniture and landscaping features to boot. This time, Townsend saw fit to live in the house that he had spent so much effort and cash to maintain over the years. To honor his role in preserving and expanding it, the house is often referred to as the Reeve-Townsend House.

In 2005, the Reeve House was bought by preservationist and architectural historian Ted Wells of the Greene & Greene Trust, who have done much to restore the home and remove some less simpatico additions from the 50+ years after Townsend’s death. According to Wells, out of the original 139 decorative items, only a front porch light, a display cabinet, a door mirror and a pair of andirons were still there when the Trust took over. The lantern and andirons were put on display at the ​​Long Beach Museum of Art, and a couple other items were recovered at auction houses. 

Nearly two decades later, restoration is still underway. The outside looks immaculate, the landscaping lush and complementary to the house itself. A non-original pool was filled in and a thriving rose garden was planted in keeping with the original one. When I visited, there was scaffolding on the house’s southern facade. Who knows what the future lies for the Jennie A. Reeve House, but at least someone’s taking good care of it. 

Sources & Recommended Reading

+Jennie A. Reeve House’s NRHP application form

+”Greene & Greene in Long Beach: The Reeve-Townsend House: Part 1 of 3” (Ted Wells Living:Simple podcast, 2005)

+Blueprints of the Jennie A. Reeve House (Avery Architectural Fine Arts Library @ Columbia University)

+”Greene & Greene homes first built in early Long Beach” (Long Beach Writer, 2012)

+Maio, Pat: “Virginia Country Club a Close-knit Community” (The Orange County Register, 2014)

+JENNIE A REEVE – TOWNSEND HOUSE (Long Beach CA Historic Homes)

+Outten, Catherine: “Long Beach Public Library: Inception” (Final paper for UCLA Information Studies 281, Spring 2004)

+Ryun, Ruth: ”Rare Long Beach gem: a Greene & Greene” (LA Times, 2004)