Alice Parsons Millard (May 4, 1873 – July 15, 1938) was an American bookseller and promoter of culture in the Arroyo Seco region of
Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...
. She is widely known for commissioning
Frank Lloyd Wright to build her house (
La Miniatura
Millard House, also known as La Miniatura, is a textile block house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1923 in Pasadena, California. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Wright's textile block houses
Th ...
) in Pasadena.
Chicago
Millard was born in Chicago and left as a young woman to study art in London. On a visit home to Chicago, she wandered into the Chicago book store operated by
A.C. McClurg
A. C. McClurg was a stationer, publisher, and book wholesaler for over 120 years in Chicago, Illinois. The business began in 1844, as Chicago's first stationery store and changed hands several times, often as the result of a fire. Alexander McCl ...
and asked for a book on William Morris. George Millard, who worked in the Rare Book Department, "was pleased to help the attractive young woman who had interests similar to his own," according to Ward Ritchie.
A romance ensued and in 1901, Parsons accompanied Millard on a book-buying trip to England. Parsons was 28 when she married Millard (age 55) in St. Bridge's in London. In 1906, their friend Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house for them in the Prairie School style (now called the
George Madison Millard House) located in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago.
Pasadena
George and Alice Millard moved to Pasadena after George's retirement in 1913. The couple converted a bungalow on Huntington Drive in South Pasadena into a book salon. When George died, Alice carried on with their book-buying business along with antique furniture. She commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright. According to Ritchie, "Wright was not interested in doing a traditional house on the traditional flat lot in a respective neighborhood which Alice had already purchased. He searched the area and found a tree-covered ravine leading into the Arroyo which he persuaded Alice to buy. He snugly fit the house therein."
As Alice Millard, "she became one of the most important American booksellers of the 20th century, advising, teaching, and influencing such affluent disciples as William Andrews Clark, Templeton Crocker, Caroline Boeing Poole, and Estelle Doheny."
[Michele V. Cloonan. "Alice Millard and the Gospel of Beauty and Taste". In ]
See also
Artists of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles)
The Arroyo Seco region has been home and inspiration to artists from Los Angeles' boom years of the 1880s to present day. This region of Northeast Los Angeles that borders the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River encompasses Pasadena, Altadena, H ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Millard, Alice
1873 births
1938 deaths
American booksellers