Ranch & Coast Magazine

@ranchandcoast ranchandcoast.com 90 APRIL 2022 RANCH & COAST MAGAZINE a family there. I walked into that house and said, 'I'm home.'" Freeborn quickly agreed to underwrite the statue. "I just wanted to show my appreciation for this community," she says. "Rice was quite a lady. She deserves a statue. I'm really privileged to do this." e Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society, led by President John Vreeburg, commissioned a bronze of Rice by local sculptor Nina de Burgh. For more than a year, the statue took shape in the artist's studio. Later, at Southwest Boulder and Stone in Fallbrook, members of the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society carefully selected just the right stone for the statue's base. On October 23, 2021, declared "Lilian Rice Day," the society unveiled the statue in Rancho Santa Fe's North Village Park. e community then turned out for a "Roaring '20s Gala" in Rice's honor, co-chaired by Brooks and Peggy Ault. Although her career in architecture was brief, Rice has had a major impact on the profession, says Welch. "Lilian Rice supported and uplifted many up-and-coming architects, both male and female, and in doing so, her legacy was to pass on her philosophy of simplicity in design. Ahead of her times, Ms. Rice was on the cusp of modernism, and had she lived beyond her 49 years, she would have been a leading figure in modern architecture. Today, her surviving buildings speak volumes about her mastery in design," adds Welch. Rice never wavered from her philosophy that architecture should harmonize with its surroundings. She once wrote: "With the thought early implanted in my mind that true beauty lies in simplicity rather than ornateness, I found real joy at Rancho Santa Fe. Every environment there calls for simplicity and beauty — the gorgeous natural landscape, the gently broken typography, the nearby mountains. No one, with a sense of fitness, it seems to me, could violate these natural factors by creating anything that lacked simplicity in line, in form, and color." Written in 1928, Rice's words still capture the essence of Rancho Santa Fe today, where her vision lives on. For a video about Lilian Rice's life and legacy, visit ranchandcoast.com/lilian. ANDREA NAVERSEN Connect community GALA PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENNIFER NELSON Sculptor Nina de Burgh and Jenny Freeborn, who underwrote the statue, at the unveiling on Lilian Rice Day in Rancho Santa Fe Paul and Diane Y. Welch, Lilian Rice's official biographer, at the Roaring '20s Gala Debi Holder, Joe Mize, and Peggy Brooks, who envisioned a statue in Lilian Rice's honor <<

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