Modesto was on the cutting edge of environmental and artistic design and it received national attention. In the 1940s, the New York Museum of Modern Art published three books featuring Modesto architecture. The Modesto Art Museum has documented more than 85 Modernist buildings and landscapes in Modesto from noted 20th century designers including John Funk, William Wurster, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gardner Dailey, Henry Hill, Cliff May, Joseph Eichler, Christopher Alexander, William Turnbull, Joseph Esherick, SOM, Thomas Church, Lawrence Halprin, and many more. Modesto's architecture was a model for other cities and a laboratory in the development of a distinctive California style, Central Valley Modernism that blended the indoors with the outdoors.
—Jessica Gomula-Kruzic