Degrees of Separation
In the print edition of the LA Times' real estate section yesterday I came across a picture of a
Richard Neutra house, turned the page and saw Frank Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura. Neutra and Wright, whose lives were once closely related to one another, were reunited in today's newspaper.
Wright built the house for Alice Millard in 1923. He had already designed a home for the rare book
dealer in Highland Park, Illinois in 1906, and she returned to him for the plan of her "little studio house," on a steep hillside site in Pasadena, CA. Wright decided to experiment with his new "textile block" building program on this project. His idea was to devise a system of interlocking, decoratively patterned concrete blocks that created a cheap, fast and effective way to build a house. It might also make him rich in the long run because he intended on patenting the process and building homes around the country using the formula. Only four Wright block houses were constructed in the U.S., all in LA. Contractors had a tough time with the new methodology and Wright's blocks cost more money to produce than conventional concrete block. Wright lost interest and was ready to move on to his next big idea.
Many people are surprised to find a Frank Lloyd Wright presence in the Los Angeles area. The
Millard house was not his first architectural foray into southern California. Around 1915, oil heiress Aline Barnsdall decided she would use her riches to support an art colony. She picked a 32-acre site in L.A. called Olive Hill as the place to build a compound that would consist of housing, studios, workshops and a theater. Ms. Barnsdall was a free-thinking, modern woman and picked as her architect the similarly free thinking Mr. Wright. The showpiece of the plan was Hollyhock House, so named because it was Aline's favorite flower and the basis of the stylized architectural ornamentation he created for the project. By the time construction started in 1919, Wright was in Japan working on his largest enterprise to date, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. So, he sent his son Lloyd, along with architect Rudolph Schindler, to come to L.A. and babysit Aline and her house on the hill.
Schindler was working with Wright at his home and studio - Taliesin - in Wisconsin, when Wright
secured the mammoth hotel commission. Schindler had attended university in Germany, and after joining the Wright stable, persuaded his friend and former classmate Richard Neutra to join him in Wisconsin. Neutra followed Schindler to L.A. and went on to establish himself as one of the pioneers of modern design in the United States. The Kun house, built in 1936, was based in part on a design of Neutra's ground-breaking Lovell House, constructed in 1927.
In the never ending cycle of degrees of separation from Wright, the most noted design of Neutra's
career came from a previous Wright client, Edgar Kaufmann, Sr. In 1936, Wright built a summer home for Mr. and Mrs. Kaufmann in Pennsylvania called Fallingwater, and ten years later Neutra built his acclaimed, Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, CA. The Kaufmanns, like many other snowbirds, were over winter weather and decided to spend the season in the California desert. Ironically, instead of turning to Wright again, they sought out the talents of a former member of the fold, who gave the couple another landmark house. Wright surprisingly had no cuttingly caustic comments to make, perhaps because he was in the midst of designing the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
I can never get enough of Sullivan and Wright. They haven't really gotten their due since Mies and his cohorts immigrated to the US after World War II.
Keep up the good work!
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