Frank Lloyd Wright comes to California

Some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most engaging and innovative architecture was done in Southern California in the years following the end of World War I. From 1919 to 1923, the architect worked part-time in the newly-sprung Los Angeles metropolis, during the midst of a tremendous economic boom fueled in part by the explosion of the personal automobile and the petroleum industry maturing in California at that time. In a span of only 4 years he created new forms of American architecture that we can still look to for inspiration. (At the same time, he was engaged to build the monumental Imperial Hotel in Japan, arguably one of his greatest achievements.)

Above: the Alice Millard House, also known as La Miniatura, 1923, in Pasadena, a short walk from The Gamble House, Charles and Henry Greene's 1908 masterwork of American Arts & Crafts architecture.

Below: detail of the Samuel Freeman House, also circa 1923, just up the hill from Hollywood Boulevard.

After building the Hollyhock House in 1921, his first project in California, Wright set out to create 4 more homes in the Los Angeles area using his new “textile block” system of cast concrete blocks. In addition to the Millard House and Freeman House shown above, he built the Storer House at the west end of Hollywood Boulevard (bought and restored in the 1980s and still in private hands), and the Ennis House, in the Hollywood Hills below the Griffith Observatory.

Wright's patterned cast concrete looks great, especially as it is shadowed by the unique light of Southern California. This construction method embodies his ideal of “organic architecture:” sand in the concrete came from the construction sites. While the concrete was beautifully handled by the genius Wright, it has proven to be highly susceptible to aging and all the buildings have required tremendous work in recent decades just to keep them standing. Even with rebar tying the blocks together, this construction technique probably wasn't the best choice for a region beset by earthquakes and torrential rains.

Below: the Storer House, Hollywood, California (private):

Below: the Ennis House, Hollywood, California. Notice that the building is clad in construction scaffolding; this was during 2007's long-needed stabilization project to secure the home on its hillside perch.

Here are some photos of the concrete blocks disintegrating at the building's foundation, and a New York Times article from 2005 about the restoration of the Ennis House.

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