Los Angeles

Mid-century to Modern

Back in 2019, on a trip to Los Angeles, I booked a tour around town with an architect-guide in a mini-van. Our goal was to inspect, from the street, some of the iconic Mid-century houses in Silver Lake, designed by names such as Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, John Lautner, Gregory Ain and Lloyd Wright, Jr.

Poolside at The Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, by Richard Neutra, build 1946 and For Sale in 2024

Richard Neutra

One of the architect names I came to know was that of Richard Neutra (1892-1970). Neutra was born in Austria and trained in Europe, but immigrated to America in the 1920s. After a short stint working with Frank Lloyd Wright, he gradually built his own career and became one of the most prominent modernists working in the USA. He designed many residential homes in Los Angeles.

Neutra with a photo of the Beard House, 1935 [Wiki]

On my 2019 tour, our clutch of architecture enthusiasts managed to take a walk inside one Neutra building, the ‘VDL Research House’, built 1932 (and rebuilt after fire in the 1960s). Once Neutra’s home, it was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 2016.

Fun fact: It’s called the ‘VDL Research House’ because it was built with a loan from Neutra's early patron, Cees H. Van der Leeuw, a wealthy Dutch industrialist and architecture aficionado.

Neutra and his wife, Dione, raised their three sons at the house. He also ran his architecture practice out of a studio in the house until he later opened his design studio at the Neutra Office Building (1950) on Glendale Boulevard (also listed on the National Register of Historic Places).

My visit to Neutra’s ex-home, 2019

In a 1947 article ‘The Changing House’ Neutra emphasised what he called the “ready-for-anything” plan: an open, multifunctional plan for living spaces that are flexible, adaptable and easily modified for any type of life or event. It’s been said of Neutra that his houses ‘erase the boundary between inside and outside.’

Neutra’s VDL House interior [Wiki] 1932

Of course, in the Hollywood Hills and with movie moguls as your clients, you can go to town with views and cantilevers, spectacular pools and wide window vistas.

John Launter’s Silvertop Residence, Los Angeles, 1963 (you could have bought it for US$7.5m in 2014) [source]

Mountain houses too. Neutra’s Taylor House, 1961, north of Glendale. Available for rent in 2024.

The Trousdale Estates

A friend recently loaned me this lovely book about The Trousdale Estates, an enclave of over 500 houses built in Beverley Hills in the 1950s and 1960s, which became legendary for its celebrity residents and the extravagance of its houses. Some of the most revered names in mid-century Californian architecture were involved: architects, tastemakers, media stars, designers. Think martinis and the Rat Pack.

According to Wikipedia, Celebrity residents have included Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Ray Charles, Howard Hughes, and Groucho Marx. President Richard Nixon lived in the neighbourhood from 1962 to 1963. More recently residents have included Jennifer Aniston, Elton John, Vera Wang, Jane Fonda, Ringo Starr, and the guy who founded Uber. Prices up to US$35m.

Why am I thinking of these gorgeous designs right now?

Partly because I visited my friends’ new house, which seemed to me inspired by these design stars. It looks out over the Pacific Ocean, from the opposite side to California.

Cantilevers and views; mid-century / modernist inspired design

And partly because of an article by Alex Ross in The New Yorker this week, The Hidden Histories Lost in the Los Angeles Fires. Many great modernist houses were burned. The L.A. Conservancy and USModernist have posted lists of lost buildings. Ross writes:

During the pandemic, when I was writing about the modernist architect Richard Neutra, I took advantage of light traffic to roam all over the city, seeking out its astonishingly rich modernist legacy. I worked through a checklist of several hundred houses by Neutra, R. M. Schindler, Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Raphael Soriano, and other modernist pioneers… Dozens of dwellings I saw on those expeditions are gone, including three by Neutra: the Hees House, the Kesler House, and the Freedman House, all in Pacific Palisades.

The Freedman House, Richard Neutra, built in 1949, has been largely destroyed. Photograph by Julius Shulman / Courtesy The Getty Research Institute Digital Collections

And so I pause in my own efforts to create a mini-design icon in suburban Normanhurst, to remember the heyday of mid-century / modernist architecture in California, the architects who created it, the successive owners who have preserved it, and the firefighters who saved (some of ) it.