Famous Homes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright is known for his unique and revolutionary design style as well as his designs for furniture, decorative objects, and intricate stained glass windows that went inside his structures. We looked at an iconic FLW house in Los Angeles called the Ennis House, previously here. But there is another FLW house in LA that is equally famous and revolutionary.

The Hollyhock House was built for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall between 1919 and 1921, and predates the Ennis House by a couple of years, serving as a sort of dry run for the extravagant elements seen adorning the Ennis House. Barnsdall had acquired 36 acres of land called Olive Hill and hired Wright to build an arts complex with a theater, cinema, commercial shops and artist residences that would cover much of the property. However, only the Hollyhock House was completed.

Hollyhock House - Photo by Joshua White

Wright and Barnsdall had a difficult working relationship, exacerbated by the fact that during construction on her home, he was mostly in Japan overseeing the construction of his famed Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. He delegated much of the daily work to an assistant, Rudolph Schindler, and to his son Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. The design itself is a U shape around a central courtyard. He envisioned the entire structure as a Mayan Revival building, the same style of the Imperial Hotel and the Ennis House. In fact, the walls are titled at 85 degrees giving the appearance of a Mayan near-pyramid temple.

Exterior of Hollyhock House in 1921 - Photo by Julius Schulman

Exterior of Hollyhock House in 1921 - Photo by Julius Schulman

Barnsdall's favorite flower was the hollyhock and FLW used stylized and abstracted designs of the stalks on the exterior, much the way he used stamped concrete tiles at the Ennis House.

Abstracted hollyhock stalks - Photo by Joshua White

The abstracted concrete hollyhock can be seen along the top of the building in a frieze, creating an almost crenellated effect, as well as in finials at the stairs to the rooftop terraces.

Photo by Joshua White

Photo by Joshua White

Photo by Joshua White

The interior of the home is beautifully laid out with levels, steps, and halls and loggias connecting smaller private spaces...creating a feeling of openness yet at the same time of intimacy. Below we can see a view from the entry and the dining room off to the left. 

Entry - Photo by Joshua White

Dining room - Photo by Joshua White

Wright designed the octagonal dining table and high-backed chairs with LA furniture manufacturer Baker Brothers.

The stunning centerpiece of the living room is the fireplace, a soaring monument with a bas relief of geometric forms and more abstracted hollyhocks. The ceiling over it features a stained glass "skylight" set in a slatted wood frame. Interestingly, the original construction of the fireplace included a moat that was to be filled with water that came from the fountain outside, and recirculated back. The idea of contrasting fire and water was a poetic one but the mechanics of it all proved to be too complicated. In the 1965 photo below it looks as if the moat around the hearth had been filled in, but the current iteration of the fireplace shows the moat has been returned, albeit empty.

Hollyhock House living room in 1965 - Photo by Marvin Rand

Hollyhock House living room as it is today - Photo by Joshua White

Wright also pioneered a bold feature of architecture: corners of mitered glass, shown here on the Sun Room.

Like so many of FLW's structures, the Hollyhock House has had tremendous structural problems. It has been plagued with copious leakage, sagging concrete beams, rain water issues on the flat roofs, earthquake damage to unreinforced sections of cantilevered concrete, and cracks in the pool. However, starting in 2008 a deep restoration took place, and Hollyhock house opened again to the public in 2015 with all issues resolved. You can take a self-guided tour of Hollyhock House by visiting their site for information. If you can't get to Los Angeles, there is a marvelous virtual tour here.

Happy designing!

Know Your Chairs: The Origami Chair by Frank Lloyd Wright

For this posting in our ongoing series Know Your Chairs, let's look at a very unique classic.

When the legendary architect and furniture designer Frank Lloyd Wright began building his Taliesin West compound, a winter home in warm Arizona for when things got too chilly at his primary Taliesin compound in Wisconsin, he naturally designed and furnished the interiors as well. And his Origami Chair first built in 1949 for the Garden Room has become a much sought after piece of furniture.

Officially titled the Taliesin1 chair and made from a single sheet of 4' x 8' laminated plywood, the armchair appears to be folded much like a piece of paper folded in the ancient Japanese style of origami. Here are the oirignals in situ at Taliesin West!

The chair was briefly in production for purchase by Italian furniture manufacturer Cassina in the 1950s, then reissued from 1986 to 1990 but fell out of favor as being too odd and avant garde. And now, I am happy to report, Cassina has brought the chairback once more with some slight modifications. They consulted original plans and drawings for the chair and removed the front "feet" for a cleaner look, and made the back recline at a greater angle for more comfort.

This classic can be configured with several different wood and upholstery choices and purchased at Cassina.com.

Happy designing!

Famous Homes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House

In our continuing series of Famous Homes, let's travel to Los Angeles to take a peek at an amazing property designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1923 and built in 1924 for retailer Charles Ennis and his wife Mabel, now known (naturally) as The Ennis House.

The house, based on ancient Mayan temples (the Ennis House is sometimes referred to as an example of Mayan Revival architecture), is the fourth and largest of Wright's textile block designs, constructed primarily of interlocking pre-cast concrete blocks made of locally sourced decomposed granite. These textile blocks were inspired by reliefs seen at the Governor's Palace in the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal.

Each of the 27,000 concrete blocks used in the house measures 16 inches square with a 3.5-inch thickness and were made by hand using aluminum molds. These blocks were then woven together with steel rods, lending the name "textile blocks."

While the outside is staggering beautiful (check out that view of downtown LA!)...

...the 6,200-square-foot interior is where we find soaring ceilings and tall art glass windows (some of the last made by Wright). It is easy to sense the temple-inspiration in the proportions and layout of the interiors.

But the Ennis House has not been without its problems. Even while it was being built, it was plagued with structural instability issues with lower sections of the outer retaining wall buckling under pressure. And over a short amount of time, the concrete blocks began to decay prematurely because decomposed granite had been added to the concrete mix, which added natural impurities. That coupled with air pollution took heavy toll on the exterior, and consequently the interior. And then the house suffered extreme damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake as well as the record precipitation during the 2004–2005 rainy season. 

By then, the house was in such peril that the National Trust for Historic Preservation included the home on its 2005 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Places. But after a nearly decade long restoration of the home with help from Wright’s grandson Eric Lloyd Wright, who was the historic preservation consultant for the project, the home is now in perfect shape. Restoration work involved structurally stabilizing the house as well as replacing nearly 4,000 of the home’s 27,000 textile concrete blocks. The building was also re-roofed during the restoration, and the home’s interior wood floors, ceilings, and art glass windows were restored.

And of course, because such a grand, unique home is located in Los Angeles, it has shown up in films, on television, in commercials, and even in music videos! It served as the backdrop for films like "The Day of the Locust," "Rush Hour," "Grand Canyon," "The Rocketeer," and "Black Rain."

Grand Canyon

The Rocketeer

Black Rain

It has been featured in episodes of  "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Twin Peaks" but is perhaps most well known for being the location of Deckard's apartment in the classic sci-fi film "Blade Runner." While only a shot of Deckard arriving at the forecourt was actually filmed at the Ennis House, the interior of his apartment was created on a Warner Bros. set by by designer Charles William Breen who used actual plaster casts of textile blocks from the Ennis House to build the set! 

Even though the house is currently owned by a private individual and is generally not open to the public, part of a stipulation of the home's sale in 2019 is that it must be open to the public 12 days a year. But I can't find any information about when or how that takes place.

The Ennis House is listed on the Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places, as well as the National Trust for Historic Preservation list of Endangered Historic Places, and is a designated California Historical Landmark, and a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. The Frank Lloyd Wright website gave the Ennis House its own page, seen here.

Happy designing!