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This article was submitted by Janna Wong Healy, one of Gin Wong’s daughters.

You may not recognize his name, but I say with pride that my father is one of a few who was responsible for bringing the city of Los Angeles into modern times via his work as an architect. 

My dad, Gin D. Wong, was born in Gom Benn Village in 1922. In an unbelievably selfless act, his mother, Ng Pui King, sent him to the United States at age 9 with her best friend, Lee Shee, so he could have a better life. He grew up in the area off downtown LA, around San  Pedro Street, and helped his adopted family (and their nine children) operate the family-owned, Chinese-American grocery store Ying Chong Lung. 

When he graduated from high school, he studied engineering at Los Angeles City College before volunteering for the military, which was amassing an Army for America’s  entrance into World War II. During boot camp, it soon became clear to his superiors that he was not just a talented artist (he created posters and graphics for his unit) but also a very smart man. For example, he was one of a few dozen soldiers to be trained in the use of radar, a system so new that there wasn’t a prototype to look at during the tutorial. In fact, he said that when he stepped into the B-29 for the first time, it was also  the first time he saw the radar mechanism in real life! 

As part of the US Army Air Corps, he was stationed on Tinian Island in the Pacific, becoming the lead navigator for his bomber unit, navigating the William Allen White B-29 through several bombing runs over Japan before receiving his honorable discharge. 

It was during his time on Tinian Island that his life course changed dramatically. One of his Army buddies suggested that he study architecture. After all, he was strong in math, physics and science, and he was a talented artist. So, when he returned to the States, he investigated the profession, studied as a freshman the University of Illinois before transferring to the University of Southern California’s School of Architecture in the late 1940s. He graduated with a Master of Architecture degree in 1950, with the help of the GI Bill. 

At that time, working professionals were hired as professors in the School of Architecture. One of my father’s professors was William L. Pereira, owner and  president of William L. Pereira & Associates, an international, world-class architecture firm with signature building designs across the United States. Mr. Pereira immediately recognized my father’s talent for design and recruited him to work at his firm right out of  college.

It was a great pairing, and the timing was perfect. The City of Los Angeles was on the verge of transforming from an old-fashioned city to a modern one. My father was in the perfect place in the perfect city at the perfect time. 

“As a lead designer … Gin Wong … often pared down the buildings he worked on to a single memorable gesture. There’s the swooping roofline of the Union 76 gas station in Beverly Hills, among postwar L.A.’s singular landmarks. The peaked silhouette of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. The glowing cube at the heart of CBS Television City. Those forms were memorable in part because they matched the spirit of the age in California. They were a visual shorthand for the future.”

Architecture Critic Christopher Hawthorne, L.A. Times (2017)

In the mid-1950s, the City of Los Angeles decided to enlarge and transform its quaint airport into an international one. My father was named Director of Design for the joint LAX Venture Group of Pereira, Williams and Beckett (with Pereira’s firm acting as Executive Architect), and his design skills were right where they needed to be. He was  instrumental in the design of the LAX Theme Building (often referred to as a Paul Williams design but it was actually designed by the LAX design consortium). 

Borne from the LAX design was one of my father’s most famous (and loved) designs…the  Beverly Hills gas station located at the corner of (little) Santa Monica Boulevard and Crescent Drive. This station was the first commercial design of my father’s to be constructed…it was originally going to be part of LAX but when the airport decided  against selling gasoline, the design was put up for auction and Union Oil was the winning bidder. They placed it at the corner in Beverly Hills and there it still stands. It was designated with landmark status a few years ago. 

In addition to LAX and the Union 76 gas station, my father designed Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and, my personal favorite: CBS Television City, another of his designs with historic-cultural landmark status.  

My father also designed the first skyscraper to be built in Los Angeles after the  moratorium on high-rise buildings was lifted. It still stands at 1150 South Olive Avenue in downtown Los Angeles and carries the name of his alma mater: USC. 

In 1973, he established his own firm, Gin Wong Associates, and through this venture, he and his associates designed many more buildings across Los Angeles, the United States, and internationally, including buildings in the Pacific Rim countries of China, Singapore and South Korea. 

My father died in 2017. My father, a young immigrant to a new land, was never afraid to work hard and did so his entire life. And through it all, he never lost his love for modern architecture. He was not only a pioneer in Mid-Century Modern architectural design but was also a devotee of it. Every single one of his designs captured the modern style. 

Importantly, my father was completely dedicated to his work and to his family. In 1964, he brought his mother over from China to live with us. Even though his workday was long, he was always home for dinner and cooked for the family on Sundays. He taught us, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren to work hard and enjoy our work. Like a mantra, he always told us, “If you love what you do, it’s not a job.” The work he loved helped guide us to work that we loved and, importantly, it taught us to love and honor his work.  

So, while you might not recognize his name, I hope this short encapsulation of his life will help you understand my father’s important contributions to the world of architecture and Mid-Century Modern design. This way, from now on, you will know and appreciate the name: Gin D. Wong. 

About the Author: 

Janna Wong Healy grew up in Los Angeles, earning both her BA (English) and Master’s (Professional Writing) from  the University of Southern California. In addition to teaching Business Communication courses at USC’s  Marshall School of Business, she writes creatively. Her collection of short stories about growing up Chinese in Los Angeles in the late ‘60s, “Unbreakable China,” are found on Kindle-Vella. Several of her short stories have been published and two of her novels, Mariana Wong’s Summer of Love and Let’s Get Lost, are currently available on Kindle. www..Janna-Wong.com.

Gin Wong’s Projects