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| Wright's Hollyhock |
It's what you get when you're a rich oil heiress and you mention to your architect that you like hollyhocks. You get a house covered with them. And on the garage and outbuildings too.
The house is just down the street from us, set in lovely Barnsdall Park on top of Olive Hill. Birdie and Stan took a nice morning walk there, strolling along Edgemont Avenue. The park is very pet-friendly, the house is not pet-friendly. Come to think of it, the house isn't exactly people-friendly either. Stan and the rich oil heiress both found that out for themselves. More on that later.
Hollyhock House is Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Los Angeles project. Built between 1919 and 1923, it represents his earliest effort to develop a regionally appropriate style of architecture for Southern California. Wright himself referred to it as California Romanza, using the musical term meaning “freedom to make one’s own form”. In addition to the central garden court, each major interior space adjoins an equivalent exterior space, connected either by glass doors, a porch, pergola or colonnade. A series of rooftop terraces further extend the living space and provide magnificent views of the Los Angeles basin and the Hollywood Hills.
The site plan included a home for Aline Barnsdall (she never married, wanted to be an actress) and her privileged young daughter; two secondary residences, a theater, a director’s house, a dormitory for actors, studios for artists, shops and a motion picture cinema. Because of financial and artistic differences, only the two secondary residences and the Barnsdall home, Hollyhock House, were ever built.
In 1927, Aline Barnsdall gave up Hollyhock House and eleven surrounding acres to the city of Los Angeles for use as a public art park in memory of her father, Theodore Barnsdall. For the next fifteen years the house was home to the California Art Club, which made full use of its dramatic design to stage plays and display artwork. The house was leased again in the 1940s and 1950s by the Olive Hill Foundation. The house was altered repeatedly to accommodate the needs and tastes of these organizations.
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| Hollyhock House was built long before the Griffith Observatory appeared on the horizon. |
Tours are conducted ($3 for a senior citizen and his camera bag) by a gang of Napoleonic docents, some paid by the city, some volunteer. Their internecine rivalries are apparent upon arrival. Our guide, an ex-Minnesotan, wore a single white glove as well as an unmistakeable air of superiority.
He did his best to prevent photography inside (understandable) and of the exterior as well (what?), insisting that photographs be taken later from beyond the chain link fence surrounding the building after his tour. Really.
Battles at the Hollyhock House began long ago when the egomanical Wright broke ground and have been raging since. The client herself never rested easy there, abandoning the home after seven years.
We stood in her bedroom with its magnificent balcony overlook of LA on one side, a fireplace and descending staircase on another, a built-in bookshelf under an oddly-positioned skylight on another, and exquisite floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows on a fourth.
The perplexed heiress contacted her architect, who was in Japan, working on the famous earthquake proof Imperial Hotel, with a question: "Where do I put the bed?" she asked.
The response from the renown architect? "Put a futon on the floor."
Lord Almighty.
Then ninety-years later, a tourist from Minnesota is told to take his photos through a chain link fence.
Then ninety-years later, a tourist from Minnesota is told to take his photos through a chain link fence.
This Hollyhock House is one interesting, feisty place.
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| Unauthorized photo taken from in front of the chain link fence. |
