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.

Technorati Tags: architecture, California, EnnisHouse, FrankLloydWright, FreemanHouse, LosAngeles, MillardHouse, StorerHouse

The Bradbury Building, Los Angeles: an architectural treasure

The Bradbury Building [Wikipedia]  is a polished gem of historic architecture in downtown Los Angeles, built in 1893 and famous for its awe-inspiring light-filled central atrium with rich details. Best known for being used in the film Blade Runner, the building got run down over the years, until a major renovation in the early 1990s brought the edifice back to its former glory. The famous interior is a symphony of polished oak railings, doors and ceilings; ornate black cast iron balustrades and columns; yellow glazed and flat   bricks walls; creamily-colored floor tiles; and maroon and white marble stair steps. Check out these historic photos on the Library of Congress website.

Here are some photos I shot in June 2007 of this spectacular interior atrium.

Below: detail of the railing on the second floor's mezzanine.

 Below: looking across the central atrium.

Below: the floor in the central atrium.

Technorati Tags: architecture, BradburyBuilding, historic, LosAngeles

Bullocks Wilshire building: an Art Deco classic in Los Angeles

A store like no other, the architectural gem is considered a national treasure, part of the fabric of Los Angeles, indelibly etched into the city's cultural soul. Historian David Gebhard calls the building “one of the key monuments of the art deco style in America and the most beautifully and consistently carried out.” Noted Los Angeles architect, Albert C. Martin says, “Bullock's was a magnificent architectural expression, a high quality design using outstanding materials. It created a new spirit in retailing.” Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Bullock's Wilshire “celebrated and climaxed the expansion of a decade… reflecting the confidence and optimism of Los Angeles.” (from Balcony Press)

In 1988-1989, I dated a woman who worked as a buyer for Bullocks Wilshire. In the morning, she'd drop me off at my job at McManus & Morgan (see my blog post) on 7th Street, a few blocks away. After I got off work at 5:30pm (a 9 hour day, a job I worked for eight years) I'd walk over to this amazing building and wait for her in the building's famous porte-cochere, through which wealthy Angelenos drove their pricey cars.

Technorati Tags: architecture, ArtDeco, BullocksWilshire, LosAngeles, WilshireBoulevard

Hello, Los Angeles (1985)

What I saw out my window after I got to Los Angeles in 1985: the view from 757 South New Hampshire, Apartment #409.

Illusions they come as reality shows
The sparklejets in my eyes, like little diamonds in snow
This ticket’s one-way and my momma is crying
To crazy Los Angeles, gonna give a try
Gave it my best try

— Junkalow, Between Love and Lost

Julius Shulman (Case Study House photographer) speaks at Art Center College of Design, Nov. 4, 2006

As part of The Gamble House's lecture series, “legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman will discuss his body of work, including his recent project photographing the newly renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. Since 1936 Shulman has been the visual recorder of modern designs throughout 45 states of the country and internationally.”

We know him best as the photographer of Case Study House #22 and the iconic image which he created, showing this masterpiece of modernism hovering over the Los Angeles cityscape.

Shulman, who celebrated his 96th birthday on October 10, was recently commissioned to re-photograph Case Study House #21, which will be sold through auction on December 3, 2006.

Also on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Case Study House #21 ~ buy your own Pierre Koenig pad
• Meeting Pierre Koenig in Case Study House #22
• Case Study Number 22 / mashup

Technorati Tags: architecture, CaseStudy, CaseStudyHouse21, CaseStudyHouseNumber22, LosAngeles, modernarchitecture, modernism, PierreKoenig, JuliusShulman

Case Study House #21 ~ buy your own Pierre Koenig pad

Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #21 (built in 1958 at 9038 Wonderland Park Ave, Los Angeles, CA) will be going on sale at Wright Auctions (Chicago) on December 3, 2006. Check out their official site. They've hired photographer Julius Shulman to re-shoot the house which he shot years ago for the new catalog. See also the floor plan.

(Photos: Wright Auctions)

Above: David Travers, Arts & Architecture magazine

From the Wright website, this description:

Pierre Koenig's Case Study House #21, now carefully and immaculately restored to the original intent and design of the architect, is an architectural landmark located in the Hollywood Hills. Completed early within his career, the steel and glass residence is a pure expression of Koenig's approach to design. Using a reduced range of materials, he created a living space that gracefully reflects the demands, conditions, and requirements of modern living in Los Angeles.

The spare structure is balanced by five reflection pools that completely surround the house and serve both cooling functions and as visual transitions between building and site. Intellectually, historically and aesthetically, the house is a pristine modern object.

Wright will offer this important real estate at auction on 03 December 2006.

Estimate $2.5–3.5 million

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Meeting Pierre Koenig in Case Study House #22
• Case Study Number 22 / mashup

Technorati Tags: CaseStudy, CaseStudyHouse21, CaseStudyHouses, LosAngeles, modern, modernarchitecture, modernism, pierrekoenig, southerncalifornia, WestHollywood

Van Nuys: A California Suburb in Decline

Certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles which have been declining for years will continue to decline — and it doesn't take a PhD to figure out which ones those will be. Los Angeles is an extremely young city and the dust is just settling into the forms that will then hold true for at least a few generations. Van Nuys, located in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, will grow as a place of low-income residents because it no longer has value to the modern American middle class economy.

Van Nuys was  a ready-made suburb to house thousands of middle class families following World War II. The Baby Boom happened in Van Nuys — and hundreds of other similar cities around America in the 1940s and 50s. Soldiers who returned from fighting the Japanese or Germans could buy a federally-financed home, work in an aerospace factory or attend a free community community college, or use the GI Bill to pay for a first-rate university graduation.

Van Nuys was one of many instant communities that were built for a specific economic condition. The booming post-war suburbs of Los Angeles played a legendary role in the growth of modern America; with that function fulfilled, these ticky-tack places will often fall by the economic wayside. Today, Van Nuys has nothing to offer most middle class families in Southern California. Instead, it represents one of suburbia's failures, with its porn shops, littered streets, graffiti, and the distinct tincture of residents who are most definitely not keeping up with the Joneses. For the good life, those who can afford to will shun Van Nuys and aim afield for places like Woodland Hills, Agoura, Santa Clarita — or any place in L.A.'s wide constellation of suburbs where real estate prices are solid and the riff-raff is at bay.

The surest sign of how a neighborhood will be in the future is to look to how it is right now: it is far more likely to stay the same than it is to change (and it is far less likely to change for the better than it is to change for the worse). We'll probably not see the sweeping reforms of "urban renewal" dreaded by cityphiles like Jane Jacobs, because the federal government is no longer in the city rebuilding business, like it was in the 1950s and 60s. The form which our cities now display will, more likely than not, become entrenched.

Photo by Kaptain Krispy Kreme on Flickr.

Just as the rich are getting richer in the overall economy, so too will rich neighborhoods get richer, as  poor ones continue downhill. The economy of our era is one of consolidation and the steady flow of money from the poor to the wealthy; the rich will continue to pour their money into ever-more solid upper- middle class enclaves, where their real estate investment is protected from decline.

Case Study Number 22 / mashup

Barbed wire, invented to fence the American West. This land is your land, this land is my land. Come and get a piece of the dream, kiddo.

And on and on it goes, Western Avenue is paved, the Engelmann oaks are cut down, the water is brought in, who doesn't hate cold winters, dollar fares to sunny Los Angeles, oranges behind the bungalow, snow capped Mt. Baldy out the picture window.

Dust bowl refugees getting their footing, returning soldiers, post-war optimism, an aerospace industry enriches the educated classes, freeways mobilize, and the International Style draws new lines.

Modernism, Art & Architecture magazine, the Case Study houses, young architect Pierre Koenig, Case Study House #22.

Endlessly reproduced, the iconic image captured by photographer Julius Shulman. A chance meeting with the architect decades after its building.

(from the J. Paul Getty Trust website)

Time passes. Accumulations, and discards. The fence pieces, the image, a natural fit. The home, you can't, not anymore. Too many coming in, too many being born, just a blip, an accident of history, no more trailers by the beach, too much cash, debtor nation, every 9th person wants to sell me a house, loan me hundreds of thousands of dollars, piles of debt, it would seem, does not matter, U.S.A., freedom to shop at WalMart 24 hours a day, freedom to drive forever and eat McDonalds, free to give our lives for a lie, free to elect scoundrels, free to give up what makes America so good.

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Case Study House #21 ~ buy your own Pierre Koenig pad
• Meeting Pierre Koenig in Case Study House #22

Technorati Tags: architecture, california, modernism, pierrekoenig

Technorati Tags: architecture, california, CaseStudy, CaseStudyHouseNumber22, CaseStudyHouses, modernism, pierrekoenig

Los Angeles: Tropical Storm Clouds in Silverlake and Griffith Park, 1992

These dark clouds mixed with low sun were typical of the tropical storms that sometimes drenched Los Angeles. One of many moments of sheer beauty in Los Angeles, which pop up between durations of smog and sun, and which go a long way toward redeeming the city.

Below: houses in Silverlake, Los Angeles. March 7, 1992.

Below: Griffith Park and Hollywood sign, Los Angeles. March 7, 1992.

Mt. Wilson Towercam, above Pasadena in the San Gabriel Mountains

My favorite webcam is the 150-Foot Solar Tower Towercam, located at the Mount Wilson Observatory on Mt. Wilson, just above Pasadena, California in the San Gabriel Mountains. Apparently there was a Minotaur rocket launch tonight from Vandenberg Air Force Base out on Point Conception, California (on the Pacific coastline 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles). It left the spectacular contrail seen below after sunset at 7:34p.m. Details from Spaceflight Now.

Check out these rocket launch links:

• Fred's Astronomy stuff: rocket launches - includes photos from the September 22, 2005 launch
• Viewing Vandenberg AFB Launches
• Flickr photos tagged “Vandenberg”

Six Feet Under: Modern Architecture in the First Season

I recently began watching HBO's “Six Feet Under” on DVD. I was pleasantly surprised to see a nice piece of modern architecture used as a set (Brenda's parent's home) in season one's episode #5, “An Open Book.” I don't know what or where this home is, but it typifies the idealization of the domestic “good life” in California, rendered in the clean lines of modernism.

Meeting Pierre Koenig in Case Study House #22

In the May 15, 2005 edition of the Sunday New York Times Magazine — “Is It Time for the Preservation of Modernism?” — I finally got to reading about James Zemaitis, “the 36-year old head of Sotheby's 20th-century-design department.” In the article, he describes how he is excited by 20th century design, in a way similar to the main character in Nick Hornby's book “High Fidelity:”

“My passion for design follows the same methodology as the vinyl junkie's. Record collecting is about pastoral nostalgia — joining the Kinks in the craving of an unsullied village green, or the beautiful loneliness of a train engineer on a forgotten Southern railroad as essayed by R.E.M. in the 1980's. Furniture collecting can evoke the same exact mood, but with a mod twist. It's wishing you could sit in a conversation pit by Alexander Girard by the fire in a Santa Fe home in 1972, or be Pierre Koenig himself in the famous Julius Shulman photograph of Case Study House No. 21.”

Here's Koenig's Case Study House #21, with Pierre Koenig himself at the stereo:

Below is one of the the most famous Shulman images of Los Angeles modernism — this night shot of Case Study House No. 22:

Years ago in Los Angeles (around 1989-1990), the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Temporary Contemporary mounted a fantastic exhibition of the Case Study houses called “Blueprints for Modern Living, History and Legacy of the Case Study House program”. At the time, I hadn't yet warmed up to modernism, but I was certainly starting to see the light.

In the huge space of the museum, they had actually built “a full-size, walk-through model of Case Study House 22 in their Temporary Contemporary Building,” itself designed by Frank Gehry. They had built the structure atop a riser about 10 feet high in a corner of the cavernous space. It was positioned to look out toward an array of hanging video monitors strung against a black background — en echo of the lights of Los Angeles spread out below the hilltop perch on which the house had been built.

Before leaving the ground floor and walking up to the house, my girlfriend and I took a seat in front of the video monitors. We watched an interview with the architect Pierre Koenig and some other footage of various case study houses under construction. After that was over, we walked up the stairway which led to the reconstructed house.

As we walked by the pool and patio leading to the glass wall you see in the photograph above, I saw what I thought might be an apparition — the architect, apparently in the flesh. I stopped him and asked “Aren't you the architect?” It was, and he was delighted to be recognized. He grabbed my hand for a vigorous shake and pronounced, “Yes, I am Pierre Koenig and I am the architect of this house!” I couldn't believe that I was meeting the man, Mr. Pierre Koenig, right there in the museum showcasing his work, right there on the patio of one of the most famous houses in America (albeit, a reconstruction, but hey). I told him that Number 22 was my favorite case study house, and he was genuinely pleased. We chatted about his work for a few moments before he continued on with his female companion, looking quite pleased to have gotten the rock-star treatment.

Update to 2005: I painted my apartment. As part of the planning, I toyed with the idea of having a huge photo blow-up of the Shulman image mounted on the wall across from my little kitchen. Here's my photo mockup:

More on Le Blog Exuberance:

• Case Study House #21 ~ buy your own Pierre Koenig pad
• Case Study Number 22 / mashup
• interior design // more or less
• putting the mod in modern

Observations from the Mt. Wilson Observatory, Los Angeles County

High up in the San Gabriel Mountains, overlooking the San Gabriel Valley, sits the 150-Foot Solar Tower at Mt. Wilson Observatory. You can get a live image from their webcam on this page. All very cool.

Here's a picture from the cam right now, around 5:28pm on Saturday March 5:


And at 5:39pm:

That Southern California mountain goodness makes me all tingly inside.

Canyon Service Station (507 Entrada Drive), Santa Monica Canyon, California

This old gas station, Canyon Service and Detail (aka Marquez Filling Station and Canyon Service Station) in Santa Monica Canyon (Santa Monica, California), is up for historic preservation status. As well it should be. Read more.

The Fat Life Of The Delectable Mountains

The architectural historian and critic Reyner Banham, author of Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, in that book described the ecology of the hills in Los Angeles:

That is what the foothill ecology is really all about: narrow, tortuous residential roads serving precipitous house-plots that often back up directly on unimproved wilderness even now; an air of deeply buried privacy even in relatively broad valley-bottoms in Stone Canyon or Mandeville Canyon. Even more than the second-growth woodlands of Connecticut or the heathlands of the Kentish Charts, this is landscape that seems to cry out for affluent suburban residences, and to flourish when so employed. Watered, it will carry almost any kind of vegetation that horticultural fantasy might conceive. Indeed, there is no native style of gardening in common practice at all, and cacti and other desert plants are quite difficult to find in the foothill cities. What are not difficult to find are laurels and other dense-growing small-leaved shrubs that can be used to make thickets of instant privacy, essential to the fat life of the delectable mountains. (p. 99)

They are truly a charmed place. May I present the evidence below:

Runyon Canyon Park, the last undeveloped canyon behind Hollywood, provides this view back into the hills:

The Hollywood sign, viewed from a ridge above Runyon Canyon:

Looking up to Inspiration Point at Runyon Canyon Park:

Cactus growing among the chapparral in Runyon Canyon:

Elsewhere in the hills...

A taste of that charming and ever-appropriate Spanish Revival:

Goofy modernism along Sunset Plaza Drive:

John Lautner's Garcia House, on Mulholland Drive.

In the hills above West Hollywood.

See? It really is the fat life.

Things I Saw In Los Angeles...

I saw the Aztec Hotel on Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia, California, an outrageous Pre-Columbian-inspired monument (to kitsch?) built by Robert Stacy-Judd in 1925.

I saw someone using a hose to rake the leaves (it's southern California — what drought?).

Up San Gabriel Canyon in Angeles National Forest, I saw people watching people...

...who were driving their off-road vehicles around in the mud and dirt...

I saw this bobcat up in Kagel Canyon — only the second one I've ever seen.

I saw the Gamble House, which has just undergone a huge restoration.

I saw this church, in Los Angeles at Sunset Boulevard and Cherokee. The last time I photographed this, in 1991, there was a World War II B-17 bomber flying over it for the Desert Storm war parade.

Curson Avenue, Los Angeles: Canyon Architecture Old and New

Curson Avenue in Los Angeles, north of Sunset Boulevard, has fascinated me for almost twenty years, since the first time I strolled up it one night with friends in 1985. Back then, it was full of classic Hollywood homes: California and Japanesque bungalows, Spanish Mediterranean Revival haciendas, modest but cool Case Study modernist homes, even a Rudulph Schindler home, the Erlik House from 1952 at 1757 N. Curson. Wattles Park and its mansion fill one side of the street for almost a whole city block. At the end of the street was an easily passable fire road gate, beyond which was a long winding dirt road that ran along the wall of this Hollywood Hills canyon.

When I first found the canyon, I was with my Connecticut friends Ian and Don. We were out for a walk after doing something urban along Sunset. It was late at night, the street was quiet, and we were strolling aimlessly up into this narrow canyon, having a talk and looking around.

That night is indelibly etched in my mind. It was one of my first experiences as a young man of being totally amazed by Los Angeles. Here was this secluded canyon street lined with idyllic homes, leading up to a dirt road that snaked back into the canyon with an awe-inspiring view over Los Angeles. I was smitten.

Since that day, I've visited the canyon again and again. This time, October 2004, was the most shocking transformation yet. At least 4 new homes were in the process of being built into the steep hillsides, which requires ever more desparate grading and building of vast retaining walls. Many other new super-sized homes were built which weren't there the last time I visited. The gate, once an open fire-road gate, was now a formidable security gate which couldn't be breached. More mega-homes sat on the lip of the road high above the canyon.

A few of the newer homes were fairly well done examples of modern architecture, but still I felt that something was lost with the buildup to super-sized houses.

Below: one of the old houses in the canyon: this delightful Spanish Revival is everything you could hope for.

Below: a well-done modern home in Curson Canyon. High on the ridge in the background is one of the newer super-size homes.

Below: this used to be the last home on Curson Avenue: a modest Case Study home.

Below: This new monstrosity sits at the hairpin turn at what was once the end of the public street. Note the home on the ridge in the far left background...

Here's a close-up of the home in the top-left of the above photo. From this angle, it looks like one of the finest modern homes I've seen in years (and it reminds me of how incredibly modern Frank Lloyd Wright's designs of 90 years ago were — like the Thomas P. Hardy house).

More big, more bad going up.

And another lot is prepped for building, with a huge retaining wall going in. Look at the three guys working on it!

Here's a 2004 aerial photo composite from Terraserver, showing Curson Avenue, roughly center.